


Whispering in the Dark

by morrezela



Series: Superhero 'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Amnesia, M/M, Superheroes, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:54:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years ago, Jensen woke up in a hospital with amnesia – collateral damage from a massive fight between the local superhero group and their arch nemesis. He is back on his feet now, working at a local coffee shop and dating one of the very superheroes that helped cause his injuries in the first place. Jared’s team doesn’t approve of the relationship, and neither does Jensen’s boss. Just when Jensen decides to fully commit to and move in with his boyfriend, Jensen’s past comes knocking in the form of being abducted by his supposed former teammates – the very people Jared was fighting the day Jensen lost his memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whispering in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This isn’t real. The people mentioned belong to themselves. I am receiving no remuneration from this.
> 
> Warnings: Amnesia, vulgar language, (minor) non-con kissing, superhero style violence, floating eyeballs, recurring medical problems and hospital visits, abduction, non-con drugging, angst.
> 
> A/N: This was written for spn_j2_bigbang. The story itself sprang out of a couple of ficlets that I had written last year. Although not necessary to understand the story, the two stories are Falling from the Sky and Jumping off the Deep End.
> 
> Big, big thanks to tebtosca for organizing the cheering team and email chain (dugindeep, cleflink, zubeneschamali, and fiercelynormal.) Many thanks for helping me cast and recast my characters and helping my find a title for the damned thing!
> 
> Also, thanks to cappy712 for her beta services and turning the file around so quickly!
> 
> Last, but not least, many thanks to insane_songbird for all of her hard work on the art for this. Make certain you go check out her [ art post ](http://insane-songbird.livejournal.com/185506.html)as there are extra goodies and a video to look at!
> 
> All mistakes that you find are my own.

Sugar and milk and chocolate and whip: there are more things that Jensen puts in other people’s coffee than he keeps in his own kitchen. As for his own taste, Jensen prefers his coffee with a splash of milk and a little sweetener – honey if possible. But he doesn’t drink it that way.

Black is the way it comes out of the machine. Black is the way he drinks it. Jensen doesn’t know why.

He makes coffee all day long. It is his job, his ‘profession.’ It wouldn’t take him any time at all to fix his brew the way that he actually likes it. Taking the time to indulge in something fancy would hardly be a burden. Jensen isn’t even sure if he could call it ‘taking time’ because it would be so easy for him.

But Jensen still swallows it dark and unsweetened. It makes parts of his brain itch when he does it. Small, infinitesimal parts that he just knows want to coalesce into a memory seem to thrill under the presence of hot, pure coffee in his mouth. Each sip, every gulp makes him feel like he is about to see a glimpse of his past, but he never does.

The feeling is familiar to him. Being a member of the Lucky to Be Alive Club comes with one hell of an admission fee. Not that Jensen complains about it much. Things could be worse. He could be physically crippled or mentally disabled from the pounding his skull took.

Being the freaky memory guy isn’t fun, but he is functional – for the most part. Despite what people might think, it sucks out loud when his brain finally does provide a secret. Rarely is there any point of reference for it. Jensen remembers playing soccer. He knows that he was eight and a half years old in the memory. He doesn’t know who he was playing with or where, but he remembers hating the way his new soccer cleats pinched his feet.

Jensen can remember picking up pinecones in the forest for kindling. While he is picking them up, he drives a truck to the grocery store. Logically, he knows that he didn’t complete chore two right in the middle of chore one, but his brain insists that it happened just that way. Sometimes getting memories back is worse than having them gone.

The inside of Jensen’s skull has a lot of manmade materials in it. The rubble that the paramedics had found him lounging in had gotten inside his head thanks to the great big wounds his broken skull had caused. His brain also has fragments of bone from his skull that the doctors had not dared remove for fear of damaging him even further.

He takes painkillers and the occasional sleeping pill. He lives off coffee house tips, government assistance and Jared Padalecki’s smile. Although, Jared seems to work for a government contractor, so items two and three might be the same thing.

Jared is a loyal customer at the shop. Jensen’s boss, Traci, finally had to admit that he isn’t just there to perv on Jensen’s handsome mug. She doesn’t like to do that. Recognizing that fact takes away one of her reasons for hating Jared.

Traci thinks that Jared is somehow involved with the Enforcers. Their headquarters his nearby, and she says he has ‘the vibe.’ She doesn’t dislike the Enforcers, but she doesn’t like them either. That ‘vibe’ she gets isn’t a good one.

Jensen can’t figure out if she has powers of her own or if she is just a hippie. Either way she thinks that Jared is bad fit for Jensen. As far as she is concerned, Jensen shouldn’t be hanging around with a guy who might work with the people who helped put Jensen in the hospital in the first place. She says it is bad karma. Jensen isn’t sure that is the right word, but he doesn’t bother trying to look it up when he goes to the library for their free internet.

Instead he points out that Jared is a sweetheart and that the Enforcers might be nearby, but Traci’s shop isn’t convenient for them. Traci doesn’t like those rebuttals so much. She isn’t moving off her soap box of disdain and cool tolerance.

Whatever her motivations and beliefs, Jensen doesn’t listen to her. The fight that took Jensen’s prior life away from him is something that he doesn’t even remember. Jared is somebody that he does.

“Date night?” Traci’s worried green eyes trace over Jensen’s best thrift shop jeans.

“Jared is taking me to the movies,” Jensen answers. “Before you ask, I checked it out with the doctor. No need to worry about seizures or the like. I’m not having lighting issues.”

Traci looks like she wants to say something, but she holds her tongue. “Don’t stay out too late. You’ve got the opening shift tomorrow,” she orders.

“I know, Mom,” Jensen says as he takes his apron off and carefully fluffs his short hair in the mirror. The scar tissue from his multiple lacerations doesn’t usually show, but in the right light it can. If Jensen doesn’t comb his hair correctly, a person can see just what an unattractive mess his scalp is. “Have a good night,” he calls on his way out the door.

Traci doesn’t wish it back. She never does when he goes out with Jared.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Holding hands in a movie theater is awkward, wrong. One hand should be for popcorn, the other for popcorn. Popcorning is a two hand operation is what Jensen is saying. One hand is to steady the bag, the other to eat the popcorn. Hand holding is not part of the equation.

Not that Jensen remembers going to the movies pre-Jared. That would be asking too much of his mind. But he has sense memory that has him dropping Jared’s hand to curl around the precariously perched bag of buttery goodness each time he gets engrossed in the movie.

Jared keeps snatching that hand back. It is sweet, but it also annoying. The feeling bubbles out of nowhere, and Jensen hates it.

His own emotions, he can deal with. Jared has annoyed him before. This is different. This is some part of old him, and old Jensen doesn’t have the courtesy to explain. By the time the show is done, Jensen has a headache so bad that he doesn’t have to beg off the rest of their date. Jared sees it on his face and takes him home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The thing that sucks the worst about amnesia is that it overtakes a guy’s life. How something that is essentially nothing can do that is the ultimate irony as far as Jensen is concerned. If he isn’t busy, his brain is more than happy to throw what if scenarios at him or pick at thoughts that just aren’t there.

It is a puzzle without an answer, a deep, dark puzzle intent on stealing Jensen’s new life from him. He isn’t sure if the obsession thing is a new Jensen trait or an old one. He thinks maybe both. If feels that way more often than not. He knows because he keeps track on the calendar and sixty-eight percent of the time that he thinks about it, he feels that both old and new Jensen are obsessive. The calendar thing might be a clue on that.

Of course, having his old life plucked away doesn’t exempt Jensen from troubles in the new. Jared breaks up with him on a Tuesday. The bastard waits until the shop closes and then drags his sorry ass in looking like shit. He’s been crying. There is snot dripping out of his nose. His eyes are beyond puffy; his hair is greasy and unkempt.

Jensen makes him a hot chocolate and tells him to go sit in the corner booth. It doesn’t do anything for Jensen’s inner turmoil, but the shock of Jensen’s odd reaction does make Jared quit crying. That is a good thing. Jensen hates trying to converse with sobbing people.

“So what do you want to do Saturday? Bowling? I think I might want to bowl,” is what Jensen says after he finishes wiping the tables and sits down across from Jared.

“I just broke up with you,” Jared points out with a hiccup and a sniffle.

“Uh-huh,” Jensen comments as he takes a sip of his coffee - decaf because he has to sleep, and the doctor told him to limit his caffeine intake.

“Bowling would be like a date,” Jared clarifies.

“Uh-huh,” Jensen says again.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Jared demands, tears welling right back up.

“Just did, but if you don’t like bowling we could go play darts or something.”

“We’re not together anymore,” Jared sputters, voice breaking as the tears start to fall again.

Jensen hands him a napkin. “Uh-huh.”

“Stop saying that!” Jared yells.

“I will when you make me believe the whole break up thing. Preferably with words that form coherent sentences,” Jensen tells him.

“We… I just want to… I need space,” Jared blubbers.

Jensen arches an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.”

“Dammit Jensen!” Jared snaps.

“Is it the brain thing?” Jensen asks, not caring that his voice is obviously placating in its tone. Jared clearly wants to have it out with him. He had no idea that Jared was high maintenance. Maybe he has issues. Maybe Jared is off his meds.

Jared winces.

“It is my brain thing? Seriously?” Jensen demands.

“Not like that!” Jared protests. “You’re just… delicate. I’m putting you in danger.”

“Okay,” Jensen growls as he forces himself to breathe out slowly. “I’m not delicate, and you’re going to the hospital now.”

“What? Jensen, I believe you when you say that your doctor says you’re doing okay. That isn’t the problem.”

“Oh, I know it isn’t,” Jensen says tightly. “The problem is that my boyfriend is trying to breakup with me when he doesn’t want to and is acting like I’m the one breaking his heart. Either you’re on something, or you should be. Whichever it is, we need to go get you checked out.”

“No!” Jared declares like a stubborn two-year-old.

“Yeah, thought you might say that,” Jensen drawls. “So I took the liberty of calling the paramedics to report your erratic behaviors before I sat down. Looks like the cops came with,” Jensen says with a nod towards the window.

The operator hadn’t been thrilled when he had just hung up on her after requesting assistance. But seriously, Jared wasn’t a threat to him. Besides, Jensen had a job to get done. Being on the phone wasn’t going to help him keep an eye on his boyfriend or get the counters cleaned. Plus the area of town that he both lives and works in means slow response times in emergencies.

Underfunded hospitals and police stations create poor service even before the general apathy is added on. There is only so far that resources can stretch. Jensen understands the economics of it. He just doesn’t like them.

Jared glares daggers at him, but he goes quietly enough. The cops and medics don’t offer Jensen a ride. ‘Boyfriend’ isn’t a good enough title to gain that privilege, so Jensen walks his way there. He doesn’t have money for a cab, not if he wants to eat something healthy that week. The buses are scary, and it isn’t like Jared is going to get diagnosed right away.

By the time that he arrives at the hospital, Jensen still hasn’t come up with a reasonable excuse to get the doctors to tell him what is wrong with his boyfriend. It kind of sucks, but it can’t be helped. They’re not that serious yet. Both of them have been taking it slow, and the emergency contacts with medical decision powers group is sort of mutually exclusive from the new boyfriend group.

Unfortunately for Jensen, he doesn’t have to worry about prying information out of the doctor. Jared is at the front desk yelling about getting released. There are orderlies trying to sedate him and some official looking people in uniforms engaging in a screaming match with the doctor on duty.

It embarrasses Jensen that one of his first thoughts is, “Christ. I have the early shift tomorrow morning. I don’t have fucking time for this.”

“You do not have medical authority over this man!” the doctor is snarling. “He is chemically incapacitated, and you are not taking him anywhere.”

“I’m fine,” Jared insists at the same time the big, burly dude the doctor had been screaming at says, “I am his commanding officer.”

The doctor ignores Jared, motioning to the orderlies to try sedating him again, and turns her stare on Jared’s commanding officer. “I’ve had a lot of your kind in here. Rank and position don’t mean a damn thing in this hospital. You want recognition, Captain Cohen? Go to the hospitals uptown that get good funding, but don’t try it here. You’re not welcome. I’m asking you to leave.”

The man sneers at the doctor. She glares back at him and orders, “Now.”

“I’m not leaving without my man,” he challenges.

“You don’t have any proof that he is yours,” she reminds him, “and he is in no condition to vouch for you.”

“I’ll have your job,” he threatens.

“You want it? Come and get it. Better you in this hell hole than me.”

The man advances on the doctor, looming over her. The other two people with him start to look nervous, but they neither move in to back him up or pull him back. Jensen takes that as enough evidence that something is about to happen that isn’t cool.

The doctor seems to have come to the same conclusion as Jensen has. “Jensen,” she calls out, surprising him with the sound of his own name, “please escort this gentleman outside.”

“Who is he,” the man demands, zeroing his hard gaze in on Jensen.

“The janitor,” the doctor lies easily. “Jensen is an expert at taking out the trash. Of course, if you want to wait for the cops to be finished with their other case in the emergency room, I’m sure that can be arranged as well. But you don’t strike me as the type to want a police report filed against you.”

“Come on, Buddy,” Jensen uses his gruffest voice as he takes hold of one monstrously muscled arm. The man scowls at him, but the two cronies with him look like they want to be gone almost as much as the doctor wants them gone.

Whatever they’re feeling, they don’t stop Jensen from pulling their friend towards the exit. In fact, one of them shoots a warning glance at Captain Cohen when he starts trying to pull out of Jensen’s grip. The guy turns his scowl to the presumably out of line crony, but he leaves. That has to count for something.

“Thank you, Jensen,” the doctor says when he comes back. “That wasn’t fair of me, but you were the only guy here who even looked like he could take that asshole if he got belligerent. Well, the only one not dealing with actual patients.”

Jensen feels bad that he doesn’t know what the doctor’s name is when she so obviously knows his, but he ignores the feeling. She did, after all, just put in him harm’s way. Unsure of what to say, Jensen rubs his forehead.

“Headache?’ the doctor asks even as the admittance nurse clucks her tongue in disapproval. The nurse he knows. She thinks that he takes too much time between checkups, is convinced that he’ll kill himself with stubbornness.

“What? No. I’m not here for me,” Jensen answers, eyes habitually darting to the over half-full waiting room. He has been to the place often enough to know some of the faces waiting their turn. He had been one of them back when his body was just one giant ache from being in a very wrong spot at a horrible time.

“Oh?” the doctor’s word draws Jensen’s attention back to her.

“I’m actually checking up on my boyfriend,” Jensen admits. “He, ah, is sort of the guy causing you all the trouble?”

“Ohhhh,” the doctor draws the word out. “Well, I can’t tell you anything, and we’re not allowing visitors at this time. But,” she adds quickly, “your boyfriend works for a jerk. In my unprofessional opinion, of course.”

“Of course,” Jensen agrees. That guy hadn’t given him the warm fuzzies either. Just touching him had made Jensen’s hand tingle in bad ways.

“You can come back Wednesday though,” the doctor adds, a falsely chipper tone taking over her voice.

“Wednesday?” Jensen echoes. Wednesday is the day after tomorrow. No visitors until then means that they’re putting Jared under observation or something.

“Yeah, sorry,” the doctor says with a shrug and a tiny smile.

Jensen doesn’t fight with her over it. He knows it won’t do any good, and he only wants what is best for Jared anyway. If he is under lock and key, then Jared obviously needs some serious care. Jensen isn’t going to be the guy stressing out the professionals by whining.

Just… having patience isn’t going to be easy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jensen is shocked that Jared is still there come Wednesday morning. He had half expected the man to be gone either of his own free will or Captain Asshole’s. Getting the morning off to come visit his boyfriend had been like pulling teeth. Traci didn’t like Jared to begin with. Now she hated him. But after enough whining on Jensen’s part, she had relented and agreed to let Jensen swap his shift.

“Hey” Jared mumbles when Jensen finally gets to his room and comes through the door.

“You look horrible,” Jensen tells him.

A half laugh pops out of Jared’s mouth at that, “Yeah.”

Jensen plops down into the visitor’s chair and sits in silence for a while before piping up with, “Well, this is awkward.”

“Yeah,” Jared agrees again. “I never thought that I’d get committed on a date.”

“Technically,” Jensen reminds him, “we weren’t on a date. Besides, at least now we can legitimately claim that our commitment issues are special.”

Jared grins and shakes his head. “Puns? Really?”

“As good of an icebreaker as any,” Jensen says.

“So I was pretty drugged up the other night,” Jared blurts out.

“I noticed,” Jensen tells him. “You taking recreationally? Because, man, I don’t want to be cruel, but you are going to get your breakup wish then.”

“No,” Jared says softly, “I’m not doing drugs.”

“Care to prove that to me?” Jensen’s question is more of a barking demand. He has had a lot of time to worry over the situation, and much as he would love to make excuses for Jared, drug abuse could be a possibility. He has seen his fair share of good people sitting in line, waiting for their next prescription drug fix. He isn’t going to date one of them.

Jensen has enough problems. He knows he isn’t in a position to be involved with something like that. He can have sympathy for Jared, but he isn’t strong enough to support him. That and Jensen’s prescriptions have some funky warnings on them. They are for pain and brain stuff. He can’t risk Jared deciding to try them out for a high.

“I’d let you read my toxicology report, but I don’t think that would help,” Jared says in response.

“You go off your meds?” Jensen might be able to handle that. So long as Jared isn’t trying to self-medicate, Jensen has no qualms about dating a guy with a few issues. Jared has been fairly sane so far.

“No!” Jared looks shocked by the mere idea. “I’m not on anything, Jensen.”

Jensen isn’t sure if he should believe that. “Guys like you don’t come fishing around my part of town unless they’ve got a reason,” he says carefully.

That makes Jared mad. “I’m not taking advantage of you.”

“I know that,” Jensen says with an eye roll. “But I also know that our relationship isn’t exactly normal. There is a reason that you’re dating an amnesiac working in a coffee shop instead of somebody a hell of a lot more with it. Statistics alone would say that you should have a more professional relationship.”

“What is this?” Jared questions. “Are you trying to breakup with me now?”

“Just trying to understand,” Jensen explains. “You’ve got to admit this is pretty weird. I want to know what is going on, especially after what happened.”

Jared deflates at Jensen’s words. “I don’t think you’re going to like it. Not sure I’m even allowed to tell you.”

“Heartwarming words if I ever hear them,” Jensen mumbles. “I’ll speed this along and take a ‘wild’ guess it has a fucking lot to do with that dickwad that was trying to get you released into his care?”

“Dickwad?” Jared echoes.

“You’re right. My sperm deserves better than to be compared to him. Now quit staling and spill.”

“I work for the Enforcers,” Jared tells him.

“And?” Jensen asks.

“Like work for, Jensen. Not in the same building sending faxes or whatever.”

“So you got, what, kidnapped and drugged?”

Jared winces. “Sort of. Less with the abduction and more with the stupidity though.”

“What? You walked into an enemy lair and had a dance party?”

Jared winces harder this time.

“Seriously?”

“There wasn’t any dancing,” he hedges. “Just a hostage situation and…”

“Wait, wait,” Jensen holds up his hand. “Why were you involved in a hostage situation like that? You’re an accountant. You’re supposed to be, like, cooking the books so that Enforcers’ revenue and support streams don’t get cut off because some enemy starts tracing your assets and shutting down your supply chain.”

Jared looks perplexed. “Where did you get that idea?”

“It’s what I told Traci back when she started getting all paranoid about your job location and potential connection to the Enforcers,” Jensen answers with a shrug. “It seemed plausible.”

“No, it does,” Jared assures him. “I just kind of feel bad about all the comments I’ve made about the bean counters now.”

“You’re not in accounting? You said you were an accountant,” Jensen accuses.

“Kind of a cover,” Jared admits

“A cover for what?”

“Come on, Jensen. I really can’t tell you that. It is way classified.”

Which makes sense – only if Jared works for the Enforcers, Jensen can’t imagine him on reconnaissance. Subtle isn’t something Jared does well. But what other reason would he have for being in that setting? Unless…

“Holy. Shit,” Jensen blurts out. Jared isn’t subtle, but he is ripped as hell. That doesn’t mean anything, except for that fact that he is confusingly single, a genuinely nice guy and gainfully employed. He is totally the type that would settle down too. He isn’t a playboy.

But the right kind of work can ruin outside relationships. Jensen has a feeling Jared might be in that type of profession. That means that his boyfriend works for the Enforcers in the slap on some body armor and a mask sort of way.

Over on his hospital bed, Jared is looking nervous.

“Holy. Shit,” Jensen reiterates with a little less awe and a little more piss.

“Sorry?” Jared squeaks out.

Jensen bets that he is. The Enforcers’ last big battle was with the Liberation League. They finally took out the enigmatic Danser. It had been a major story in the news for weeks, but Jensen missed all of the coverage. He had missed it because the Enforcers had also taken him out of commission. He had been in a coma.

“Kind of a big thing, Jared,” Jensen chokes out.

“I know,” Jared says miserably.

“So I’m what? Pity? Guilt? A case to make sure I don’t sue or make waves in the media?”

“No, none of that. You’re hot, okay? I’m shallow that way. I frequented Traci’s shop before she hired you just to get away from work for a while. But I started coming more regularly because you were pretty to look at.”

Jensen runs his fingers through his hair, feels each raised lump of flesh that Jared’s team gave him, resists the urge to dig his fingers into the tissue just to get a hint of pain to help focus himself.

“Yeah,” he says bitterly, “all fucked up with stitches and staples and scars. I was a real looker.”

“Jensen…” Jared reaches his hand out, a sad look on his face, but Jensen doesn’t want that comfort. Not now.

“I think I need to go home,” he says as he rises from his chair.

“Don’t go,” Jared begs, his hand extending farther.

For a second, Jensen relents, takes that hand in his own and gives it a squeeze. He isn’t sure that he is ready to dump Jared. Less than forty-eight hours ago, he was the one keeping Jared from doing exactly that.

“I need to think about this,” he says as he disentangles their fingers.

“Think about it here,” Jared pleads.

“Can’t do that,” Jensen rasps out. “You… you knew the score from the beginning. I didn’t. I don’t even know myself that well thanks to your group. I need to think about this alone.”

Stricken is the only word that can describe Jared’s expression, but he nods his agreement. “You’ll call? Either way?”

“I’m not cruel,” Jensen reminds him.

“No. You’re not,” Jared whispers as Jensen walks out the door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Jensen thinks about his life too hard, he gets a headache. He has long since given up determining the cause of them. Stress, anxiety, worry, scrambled brains - they’re all linked together. The why doesn’t matter so much as the fact that it happens. He knows how to avoid it, so he doesn’t so much care about ‘fixing’ the problem.

His therapist might disagree with him on that, but his therapist is on a rotation of shrinks who donate their time to charity cases like him. Jensen doesn’t expect anything more than rote responses from the guy. Plus there is that whole business of living and survival that take up a lot of possible self-contemplation time. Jensen isn’t exactly devoted to the process of constantly analyzing his thoughts.

The problem is that he really likes Jared, always has. A few omissions on his part aren’t making him less attractive. Jensen knows they aren’t the kind of secrets that a guy can just share, so he can’t blame Jared for that. But Jared did know the cause of Jensen’s injuries. He was, however large or small, a part of the cause of said injuries. That subject is a bit trickier to figure out.

Straight away, Jensen decides not to focus on Jared’s actual role in the fight. That isn’t truly germane to the situation. Sure, if Jared turns out to be Crush he might bear more responsibility for Jensen’s injuries. Crush is, after all, the Enforcer whose powers caused the concussive force that threw Danser to his grave and subsequently sent Jensen to the emergency room. But is he any more culpable than the rest of the team?

There are Enforcers whose entire job during a conflict is moving civilians out of danger. Maybe the person in charge of Jensen’s area is the one who failed. Perhaps Jensen used to be that guy who refused aide when storms and superpowers fights were coming. Maybe he had been one of those Enforcers groupies trying to get close to the action.

Jensen doesn’t know what happened that day and likely never will. He can read articles and theorize, but his memories are a bust. The official records are on lockdown. Jensen will be around eighty when they’re released. That is a bit too long to ask Jared to wait for a decision.

The dilemma is a strange one. Jensen isn’t anti-Enforcer. He isn’t one of those people who think that removing powered people from an area will make powered villains less likely to come by and terrorize the place.

But sleeping with an Enforcer is far different from being okay with their existence. Abstract is different from personal, and Jensen wishes he didn’t have to make that call. Of course, Jensen also wishes that he didn’t have to deal with massive memory loss and bones that ache when it is cold out.

After a few days of contemplation, Jensen isn’t any closer to coming to a logical decision about Jared. He can’t decide what would be the healthiest, wisest choice. There might be some truth to that whole school of thought that love isn’t rational. Not that he is in love with Jared. Just…

“Your boyfriend is here,” Traci tells him as she walks into the break room. “He brought you flowers.”

“Jared is here?” Jensen asks, surprise overriding his mouth.

“You have a different boyfriend that I don’t know about?” Traci pauses then frowns. “God. Quit grinning, would you? It is Jared, not some underwear model.”

“Jared could be an underwear model,” Jensen reminds her.

“Not the kind I like,” she shoots back. “I guess this means I have to put up with him again.”

Jensen pauses on his way out front. He hadn’t even known that he’d made his decision to go out front until he was already moving. “What do you mean?”

Traci rolls her eyes. “You’re going out there to take him back. It’s pretty obvious. Didn’t know that you liked flowers that much.”

“I don’t think that I do,” Jensen answers slowly.

“But you like him that much,” Traci states instead of asks.

Jensen ignores her and walks out into the shop.

Jared, as Traci had said, is standing out in the shop. Only he doesn’t have flowers so much as he has a whole garden in his arms. The bouquet is huge, made up of gladiolas in various shades from with fronds that look like they came out of the Jurassic era. Jared is dressed up – sort of. He is in a sweater vest, and his hair is pulled back in a ponytail. It is like he is trying to meet Jensen’s mother – if Jensen remembered who his mother was to introduce her.

“Hey,” Jensen greets as he comes around the counter.

“I got tired of waiting,” Jared says as he hands the bouquet over.

“I gathered that,” Jensen tells him.

“And I figured it’s unfair, letting you call the shots without my input. Like, I have a right to defend myself.”

“You’re not on trial, Jared,” Jensen reminds him.

“But I am,” Jared disagrees. “That’s what dating is. You try each other out, and you make a decision about it. Fair enough. I wasn’t completely upfront with you, but I’ve got a lot of great qualities besides that. And nobody is completely upfront at first, right? We all put our best case forward so that the other person gets attracted to us before they find out that we’re slobs or, or closet disco fans.”

Jensen wrinkles his nose. “I like the Bee Gees and Donna Summer.”

“Not the point, Jensen.”

“No, I think the point is that you…”

“I want you back,” Jared interrupts. “That is my point. I know I’m the kind of man that deserves that chance. I might fuck up on occasion. I might not be the best at my job or other things, but I’m a good partner.”

“Well you do have food taste in tropical rainforests,” Jensen says, hefting the bouquet and nodding at it.

“I’m serious,” Jared reminds him.

“I still don’t understand my appeal to you,” Jensen tells him.

“You’re a survivor,” Jared answers. “You’re my kind of hero, okay?”

“How am I supposed to say ‘no’ to a compliment like that?” Jensen asks.

“You aren’t, Jared tells him. “You’re supposed to come over here, kiss me and forgive me.”

“What if I want to forgive you first?” Jensen challenges.

Jared’s mouth breaks out into a grin. “I think I can handle that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The Enforcers don’t like Jensen. That isn’t a shock. Jared’s drugged up breakup speech didn’t come out of thin air. In fact, that little talk has made the dislike mutual.

Overall, Jensen is okay with the arrangement. He isn’t the first person to have unfriendly feelings towards his boyfriend’s job. He would happily continue the cold war except for the fact that it makes Jared sad. Poor Jared wants people to get along and be friends. It is kind of endearing.

It is not endearing enough to get Jensen to agree to hang out with miserable, self-important, super powered hypocrites, so he has no idea why he finds himself on a tour through the Enforcers’ Building. It isn’t actually their headquarters. Everybody with two brain cells to rub together knows that. But Jared is acting like it is the real deal, so Jensen guesses it has some importance beyond being a beard building to the masses.

The tour is as lame as a peg-legged pirate. Jensen has no clue why tourists are wasting their money on the trip. As far as he is concerned, Jared should be demanding his free employee tickets back. At least the paper might be good for something.

Before he can voice that witty idea to his boyfriend, the floor starts sinking. Or rather, Jensen starts sinking through the floor. He isn’t scared. His only thought is that there will be holy hell to pay if he gets stuck. One life threatening injury is quite enough.

“Cool, huh?” Jared asks once they’ve finished sinking through the floor and several layers of concrete.

Jensen smacks his arm and scowls.

“Not cool?” Jared says, kicked puppy dog look on his face.

It is a struggle to stay stern in the face of such adorableness, but Jensen manages to shake his head, ‘no.’

“Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine?” a voice echoes in the corridor. Jensen has no proof that the voice belongs to whoever sunk him through the floor, but he just knows it does. The creepy bastard is likely right underneath them to the side, hanging out in the wall.

“Jensen is perfect,” Jared snaps almost instantly. The hand he was holding is suddenly left hanging by Jensen’s side as Jared lets go of it to sling his arm around Jensen’s shoulders and haul him in tight.

Normally, Jensen wouldn’t stand for that sort of possessive display, but he is more interested in Jared’s automatic defensiveness.

“Nobody is perfect, Jared,” the voice says as it materializes into a person. The fucker was in the floor. The satisfaction of being right on that score mollifies Jensen’s ego when the body that materializes is a woman’s and not a man’s.

She is in uniform, full on, identity hiding uniform. She is also staring at Jensen expectantly. He supposes that he should know who she is. The Enforcers are required to have unique costumes for each member so that the public can recognize them without knowing the actual person underneath it. The knowledge is supposed to be a safeguard – a way to both cut down on generic impersonations and increase accountability for those who legitimately wear the uniform.

Theoretically, Jensen could sue the Enforcers for his injury if he remembered how it happened. The costumes would have let him know the members of the group involved. He could then file a lawsuit against the codenames and still seek out justice and remediation.

However ‘noble’ the theory, it doesn’t help Jensen at the moment. He doesn’t own a television and Traci forbids radios or televisions in the shop. She says it ruins the aura. In short, Jensen has no clue who the woman standing before him is.

“Jensen, this is Shade,” Jared introduces them a few seconds later.

“Please to meet you,” Jensen automatically lies.

Shade doesn’t shake his hand. “Don’t take him past Beta Level Six,” she warns Jared, voice appreciably higher and more feminine than it had been moments before.

“I know,” Jared stresses the word like a teenager who has been scolded one too many times by his parents.

It is a thought that Jensen shares once Shade sort of melts back down into the floor.

Jared snorts. “You don’t want to meet my parents, Jen. Trust me.”

Jensen isn’t sure if he is hurt or relieved by Jared’s comment, so he decides to chastise his boyfriend with, “Don’t call me ‘Jen.’”

“Jenny?” Jared tries.

“‘Jensen’ is two syllables. You can handle that,” Jensen tells him.

“Spoilsport,” Jared accuses.

“A word that is also two syllables – much like ‘Jensen’,” Jensen points out.

“I think maybe you were an unfulfilled English major,” Jared says.

“Is there any other kind?” Jensen asks as they begin to walk along. The new tour is actually more boring than the first, but it is better because it is just him and Jared. There isn’t a crowd of mindlessly excited people being escorted by drone-like security guards and a pompous sounding guide.

“I don’t know where everybody is,” Jared complains after a few minutes.

“Off at the real headquarters,” Jensen suggests.

“I don’t know why you keep saying that,” Jared huffs.

“Because letting the world know the exact location of your super team’s lair is idiotic and suicidal?” Jensen suggests.

Jared ignores he jab in favor of going back to his whine of, “They’re supposed to be meeting you.”

“News flash, Jay, they don’t want to.”

“‘Jay?’” Jared stops in his tracks and turns to face Jensen.

Jensen feels his mouth open and close a few times. “I actually don’t know where that came from,” he admits. His tongue doesn’t hijack him often, but he always hates it when it does. ‘Jay’ isn’t as bad as when he quotes something he doesn’t ever remember hearing, but it is odd enough to disturb him.

“It’s okay,” Jared isn’t soothing so much as he is emitting excitement. “I kind of like it.”

“It isn’t an excuse to give me a pet name,” Jensen warns.

“I know. Jen—sen.”

“Fucker,” Jensen mutters.

“You bet,” Jared says with a wink.

Jensen flushes and looks away. He isn’t shy about sex, but he is cursed with fair skin and a big, big problem with the excitable nature of it.

“Jared!” a voice rings out down the hallway.

Jared tenses and looks pissed right before a carefully neutral look comes across his features. “Crush,” he greets evenly.

Crush is huge, bulky in a way that makes Jensen think of steroids, but he assumes that he is wrong about that. Most of the powered people don’t have weight issues. The extra energy needed to power their bodies is enough to keep fat off. Their systems react faster to exercise, and that means they can build muscle quickly. There is no need for the man to take enhancing drugs when his body manufactures the same results without added costs or side effects.

“Jensen,” Jensen introduces himself amiably enough, holding his hand out in greeting

Crush eyes it warily before shaking it with a weak grasp and a limp wrist.

“There something you want?” Jared asks him.

“Mark is coming for a visit,” Crush replies.

The shock of hearing a name that isn’t a codename almost makes Jensen miss the way that Jared’s body stiffens even more. “You needed to tell me that now?” Jared asks.

“You said you wanted advance notice,” Crush says.

“But now?” Jared retorts, glancing over at Jensen.

Crush shrugs. “Thought it might be beneficial.”

“For who?” Jared snaps.

“For you, of course,” Crush replies. “You and Mark had something special. I know how hard you took the breakup, but I think the two of you could really get it right this time.”

Jared gapes at him.

Jensen doesn’t have that problem. “Wow. You have no tact at all, do you? Tell me, is it the steroid muscles or the obviously fake codpiece on your uniform that makes you such a dick?”

 

“Excuse me?’ Crush sounds insulted, like Jensen is the one who it out of line.

“Sorry,” Jensen apologizes, “I used too many words. You’re a jackass with an abnormally small penis. Is that better?”

The eye pieces on Crush’s uniform glow for a second before a short, but strong burst of air causes Jensen to stumble backwards. Jensen might not remember getting into any fist fights, but his body sure does, and it knows how to override his brain too.

Crush clearly isn’t expecting retaliation. Most normal people wouldn’t pick a fight with a guy built like him let alone start something with a known member of the Enforcers. Jensen takes advantage of that and makes sure he breaks the guy’s nose. Not a direct punch, no. The facemask has reinforcement against that.

But a palm slam upwards to the nostrils? Well that is both bloody and satisfying. If Jensen was English, it would be bloody satisfying. Laughing at his own internal witticism makes things a little weirder than they need to be, but Jensen finds that he doesn’t care.

 

“Jensen!” Jared calls out in shock, pushing Jensen behind his larger frame as if Jensen is the one who was physically assaulted.

“How dare you?” Crush roars. His words have the distinct sound of plugged nostril passages. Jensen feels oddly victorious about that.

“You started this,” Jared reminds him.

“He attacked me!”

“You attacked him first! A civilian!”

“Your ‘civilian’ doesn’t seem harmless to me,” Crush says.

Jensen can’t see because of the eye coverings on his costume, but he just knows that Crush has narrowed his eyes at him.

“What? He is just supposed to cower before you? That isn’t cool, Crush,” Jared says.

“What isn’t ‘cool’ is you bringing a security risk here, dating him in the first place.”

“Go away,” Jared hisses through clenched teeth.

Crush, to Jensen’s amazement, actually leaves. “You work with elitist pricks,” he tells his boyfriend.

“For,” Jared corrects, “I work for them. Crush is my field commander.”

“Oh,” Jensen says. At least that explains some of the hostility. Crush looks different in uniform, but now that Jensen thinks about it, the body shape is very similar to the man he escorted out of the hospital. The guy had likely been holding a grudge. Now he is holding a bigger grudge. Jensen is oddly okay with that.

“Well this isn’t going so great,” Jared mutters. “I swear that they aren’t all hostile.”

Jensen wonders if there is something wrong with him that he couldn’t care less if they are.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The day starts off nicely enough. It is raining, pouring really. There is lightning and thunder, but only in the distant way of being cool instead of scary. The noise of the storm is musical, almost poetic as it is intercut with the sound of the espresso machine screaming on and off as Jensen handles the morning coffee rush.

At ten-thirty, the day goes south.

“You Jensen?” a man demands as he struts up to the counter.

“Nope,” Jensen lies without a thought, “he isn’t working today.”

The man’s face turns red. His already pissed off expression gets darker. “You know when he’s working next?”

“Can’t tell you. We’re not allowed to give out employee schedules,” Jensen says with a mock apologetic look.

The man visibly takes a few breaths to calm down. “Can you take a message for me?”

Jensen shrugs. “Guess so,” he says as he slides a piece of paper and a pen across the counter.

The guy spends an inordinate amount of time scribbling before handing over a note that reads:  
“Stay away from my boyfriend.  
He doesn’t like or love you.  
He’s just using you to make me jealous.  
Guess what? It worked.  
We’re back together now.  
Buzz off.  
Mark Pellegrino.”

“Lovely sentiment,” Jensen deadpans.

“None of your business,” Mark tells him.

“You’re right,” Jensen agrees, putting on his happy face. “Can I get you something before you leave, Sir?”

“No,” Mark barks before he turns and struts back out the door.

“Your co-workers are assholes. Your ex is worse,” Jensen sends the text to Jared with an accompanying photo of the note that was just left.

Jared is not happy. Most of his responding messages are so fraught with random button mashing and auto-correct typos that Jensen cannot understand them. The gist is that Jared hates everybody except Jensen. Jensen is a special snowflake of wonderful who is perfect and beyond gorgeous and really good in bed.

Also? Jared is into ketchup, but Jensen isn’t sure if that is a typo, a text sent to the wrong recipient, a meal request or something he wants to try out sexually.

Jared breaks off their date night to, “Take care of something.” That alternately pisses Jensen off and makes him worry. His quickly substituted dinner of economy – off brand mac and cheese – tastes like gluey, soggy cardboard. His lumpy, fourth hand couch offers no comfort as he curls up on it.

“So I called my boss and filed a harassment complaint,” Jared announces when he just waltzes through Jensen’s apartment door a few hours later. “And your building superintendent still hasn’t fixed the security code, and your door is still unlocked.”

“Which gives you the right to burst in unannounced?” Jensen asks. He doesn’t tell Jared that the door doesn’t lock because Jared hates hearing how ‘vulnerable’ Jensen is.

“You’re right about that,” Jared concedes, “and I promise to feel guilty about that once I calm down.”

Jensen nods not so much because he condones Jared’s behavior, but because he honestly doesn’t care. The scary thing is that he isn’t sure if his apathy is due to his trust in Jared or if it comes from that place in him where his memories have hidden. He isn’t sure which option is more concerning, and he resolves not to think about it.

“So your complaint?” Jensen prompts, bringing them back on topic.

“Yeah, well, I have rights too, you know? Slapping on body armor and having superpowers requires a certain amount of sacrifice. I know that. But my teammates have stepped over the line.”

“I’d say they did a long jump over it,” Jensen says. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing at least one of them was responsible for your drugged breakup attempt?”

Jared nods, jaw clenched tight. “Crush,” he admits.

“Well that is pretty damned invasive and controlling. A coworker, your supervisor took advantage of your incapacitated state. I call that very suspicious. No. I call that illegal,” Jensen corrects himself.

“Not sure I could press charges on that. I mean, I could, but what good would it do? I’d be tabloid fodder for years and end up with a mountain of legal bills that I’d have to write a tell-all book to cover because my monetary settlement would be next to nothing once the Enforcers’ lawyers were done with it,” Jared rants.

Jensen blinks a few times before saying, “Wow. You really thought that one through, huh?”

Jared’s mouth twists into an unpleasant looking shape. “I’m not stupid just because I like to think the best of people.”

“I didn’t say that,” Jensen reminds him. “Just… that doesn’t sound like you’re thinking the best right now. Not that you should or I would if I was in your place.”

I’ve been thinking about it for a damn long time,” Jared confirms. “Started about the time that I told them I was dating you.”

“Didn’t go well?” Jensen doesn’t bother hiding the sarcasm in his question.

“How’d you guess?” Jared’s fake shock is amusing. It makes Jensen smile.

“You’re a security risk,” Jared continues after a beat. “We can’t figure out who you are.”

“Just means I haven’t been arrested and wasn’t in the military,” Jensen reasons.

“That’s what I said, but they worry that you’d be easy to compromise. The right people come along, you could get scammed.”

“If the ‘right’ people come along, I could have my entire body turned into a living lava mass. Kind of a hazard of living in any major city these days,” Jensen tells him.

“I guess so,” Jared concedes. “All I know is that I love you, and my boss doesn’t have the right to tell me not to.”

“You what?” Jensen doesn’t gasp, but it is a close thing.

Jared blushes. “I know that, that it is too soon for you, but…” he trails off with a tiny smile and rubs the back of his neck.

Jared’s words keep replaying in Jensen’s mind over and over again. Jared’s mouth is staying stubbornly closed. He isn’t taking it back. He isn’t taking it back. He isn’t…. God. Jared loves him. Jensen doesn’t know what to do with that. Neither apologies nor demands are coming forth.

Irrational anger bubbles in Jensen’s gut. How dare Jared be so rational about it? If he was demanding, Jensen could fight with him. If he apologized, Jensen could either forgive or ignore him. Then again, what sort of man thinks that love needs forgiveness anyway? What kind of person is Jensen that he is almost wanting Jared to apologize for a good thing?

How can he say he loves Jared when Jensen isn’t even sure who Jensen is?

“I’m too not me to give you an answer on that, Jared,” he finally settles on saying.

“I’m aware,” Jared acknowledges. “I know that ‘us’ isn’t easy on you. ‘Us’ isn’t easy on me either, but I didn’t choose ‘us’ because was the ‘good’ option.”

“Why did you then?”

“Because it was the right one.”

“But why?” Jensen persists.

“Because it was,” Jared says with all the stubborn faith of a five-year-old.

“That isn’t a reason,” Jensen points out with equal stubbornness.

“It isn’t a reason for you,” Jared corrects.

“But there is something that makes you… you know,” Jensen hates the flush that rises when he thinks of Jared’s inadvertent declaration.

“There are more ‘somethings’ than you know,” Jared confirms. “But you’re just trying to pick a fight with me right now because I scared you. So I’m not going to share tender feelings when you’re itching to twist my words. That wouldn’t be fair to us.”

“Your refusal to fight makes me angry,” Jensen informs him.

Jared shrugs and looks unrepentant. “Sometimes, you just have to accept that people love you,” is the only answer he gives.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Three straight days of headaches makes Jensen very cranky. He can’t even whine for sympathy to his boyfriend about it because Jared has been shipped off to some undisclosed location otherwise known as Anaconda, Wyoming. At least, television reporters are showing Enforcer footage taken in the area. Jensen might not know which of them his boyfriend is, but he can recognize Crash’s outfit well enough. It doesn’t take a leap of logic to assume that Jared is with him.

Jensen is so going to tease his boyfriend about his secret snake job when he gets back. Assuming, of course, that Jensen lives that long. Over the counter painkillers aren’t cutting it, and a trip to the doctor only yielded some concerned looks and a few suggestions of more testing.

Tests aren’t something Jensen wants to deal with. He already knows what they are going to find – a whole bunch of scrambled brains that are ‘probably’ giving off wrong electrical impulses. If it is something worse? Jensen doesn’t want to know. He knows the attitude is unwise, but he is tired of tests and pain.

He doesn’t want to die. He just wants to have a little break. Of course, fun was why he started dating Jared in the first place. Jensen had wanted to reclaim a life for himself, and dating was enjoyable as was the sex that came with it.

Now he is in a relationship. The thought bothers him far less than he thought it should. Jared isn’t ‘right’ for him on paper, but Jensen can’t deny that he is happy with him. Maybe a little envious of him too -Jared makes everything look so easy.

Jensen wonders how it is that the guy with the memory problem is the one with the romantic issues. It isn’t like he has painful remembrances of loves gone wrong. He isn’t even bothered by the possibility that there is somebody out there waiting for him. If there is, they’ve had enough time to find him.

The problem, as far as he is concerned, is that he doesn’t know enough about Jensen. But he doesn’t date say that to anybody because he’ll just get sympathy or discussions about memory loss. His concerns aren’t about who he used to be. Jensen had to let that guy go a long time ago. That man had been driving him crazy by the simple fact of his existence.

But normal people, even people like Jared who aren’t by definition normal, can’t grasp finding oneself without having one’s past experiences to build on. Jensen has to make memories and discoveries. Sometimes it is too overwhelming for him. Other times he thinks he is the fortunate one. He has the blank slate so many people wish for.

What he does know is that the thought of losing Jared upsets him. He doesn’t think it is him being clingy. He just really, really likes the way Jared makes him feel when they’re together – even when they’re fighting - especially when they’re fighting.

Nobody makes Jensen’s blood boil the way that Jared does. His stupid charm and energy can rub Jensen the wrong damned way sometimes, but never once has it pushed him over the edge or made him lash out. He isn’t left feeling bad or insecure, just angry. It is pure, the way they fight. Even if they are both stubborn asses, they don’t resort to low blows to try to win an argument.

Jensen knows that is weird, abnormal at best. He knows people would love to have that sort of relationship. He just wishes that he knew himself well enough to know if he is in love. Jared’s confession has just stayed out there for almost three months now. They’ve carried on. The closest that Jared has come to repeating his affections are the soft glances that Jensen catches him giving sometimes. But those looks have been there for so long that Jensen cannot say when they started.

“Enjoying yourself?” Traci asks, interrupting Jensen’s communion with himself.

“Yeah, I love cleaning the drip trays,” Jensen deadpans.

“Sebastian was by earlier. Said he might have some positions opening up under him at the factory next month.”

“Oh, I bet he has some positions under him,” Jensen says.

Traci shakes her head and bites her lip before saying, “Would that be so bad?”

“Excuse me?” Jensen squeaks out.

“Sebastian isn’t bad to look at if you’re into dick,” Traci says.

“I have a boyfriend,” Jensen grinds out.

“Who you’re way too serious with,” Tracy responds. “You need to not be so focused on him.”

“First of all, that is none of your business. Second of all, I can’t believe that you think sleeping with a guy to get a job is somehow better than being in a relationship.”

“Look, Jared…”

“Jared isn’t my boss using his authority to influence my life. Jared isn’t using his money fuck down on their luck men.”

“Isn’t he?” Traci shoots back.

“No. He isn’t. Not that it is any of your fucking business, but I’m the one who made that particular first move. Jared doesn’t take advantage. I don’t know what your issue is with him, but I’m done with it.”

“Fine,” Traci says, raising up her palms in surrender. “I won’t mention it again.”

“You misunderstand,” Jensen says, throwing his apron on the floor. “I quit.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There isn’t anything glamorous about working at a gas station. Jensen makes less money than he did at the coffee shop, but it is work. He doesn’t pay much for his housing, but the income lost from not getting tips leaves him hurting on his diet. He has interviews for a few different waitering and bartending gigs lined up, but there is competition for them. The economy isn’t the greatest.

He knows that he is fortunate to have landed his new job so quickly. Where he isn’t lucky is having his boyfriend stop by when he finally gets back from the mission he has been on. Jensen hasn’t told Jared about his vocation change. He hadn’t wanted him to worry while he was off fighting super powered crazies.

“Jensen?” Jared sounds confused and looks dog tired. The black circles under his eyes frame and accentuate the blood shot look of the orbs.

“Hey,” Jensen says nervously, “would you like a bag for your candy?”

“What’re you…”

“I got a new job,” Jensen explains. “Umm, you might want to find a new coffee shop.”

Jared nods dazedly. Then he asks, “Are you okay?” He doesn’t get upset about Jensen not telling him, doesn’t get irritated or whine about being tired or talking later.

“I’m fine,” Jensen assures him. “We can discuss it when you’re more awake.”

“Just give me a second,” Jared says, glancing around the store. Jensen just knows that his boyfriend is making sure that his discussion isn’t inconveniencing other shoppers.

That is what Jensen loves about him. Jared is always looking out for…

Being in love is a crappy realization to have in a gas station at eleven o’clock at night. That sort of thought should be happening at home, surrounded by comfort or on an early morning walk with birds singing or during a moonlit night of romance under the stars. It shouldn’t be happening in a gas station while he is surrounded by brightly colored snack bags and lottery signs.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Jared asks.

Jensen summons a smile. It isn’t that hard. As much as he is pissed at the poor timing of his self-realization, his heart is still thumping and giddy. “I’m good,” he answers, leaning across the counter to demand a kiss.

Jared obediently pecks his lips. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promises, words brushing against Jensen’s skin.

“Get some sleep,” Jensen orders in return.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“This is a big step for me,” Jared begins. He is nervous. Jensen can see it.

“What is?” Jensen asks as he tries not to fiddle with his napkin. They’re at a nice, chain dinner restaurant. Jared is paying, insisted on it, and Jensen is willing to let him have his way. A few special dates here and there don’t make Jared his sugar daddy.

“I want you to move in with me,” Jared announces.

Jensen freezes.

“That came out wrong,” Jared says. “Well, it didn’t. I meant that, but I meant to butter you up first and break the news in a less blunt way.”

“Don’t you live in ‘secured housing’?” Jensen asks. He has never been to Jared’s place before for obvious reasons. Jared’s leader or whoever might have put a stop to the Get Rid of Jensen Plan that the other Enforcers had been working on, but that doesn’t mean Jensen is trusted enough to be let into their super-secret lair.

“I was thinking we could rent share off property,” Jared diplomatically replies.

“Like go apartment shopping together?”

“Yeah,” Jared answers, “Like I said – big step.”

From a purely physical standpoint, it makes sense. Jensen’s apartment sucks. Plus he loves Jared, not that he has found the right time to tell him that yet. If living together doesn’t work out, Jensen can always fall back on his low income housing plan.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?” Jared sounds surprised. Jensen can’t blame him. He expected himself to put up a fuss too.

“Okay,” Jensen confirms. “Now let’s eat.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Life just cannot be easy. Jared’s team kicks up a shit storm over him moving out of the compound. There was something about security and response times and critical information control that Jensen did just not want to think about.

“We have to file an emergency response plan?” Jensen asks staring at the mountains of paper work his boyfriend has brought over.

“Well, I do, but I was hoping that you’d help.”

“Of course I well. Just… this is a bit extreme.”

Jared shrugs. “I have an extreme job. I don’t agree with all this, but I see their point. Protection concerns for myself and my neighbors have to be taken seriously. And I do have to be available during a crisis. It is a good thing I’m not a heavy hitter like Crush. I can only imagine what his contingencies look like.”

“This is weird. Even soldiers get off base housing for their families,” Jensen points out.

“I suppose, but that puts a wrench on us having secret identities, you know? Military housing has to be declared.”

“It still sucks. How does that work when you have kids?”

“Mom and Dad had a house when I came along, but the actual compounds are pretty nice. They’re not like prisons or anything. More like a gated community or apartment complex.”

“Mom and Dad?” Jensen echoes.

Jared flushes. “Um… yeah. Kind of the family business.”

“Wow,” Jensen mumbles. “I guess I didn’t think that you were, you know, born into it. Honestly, I don’t know what I thought.”

“Most people don’t think about super powered people having normal lives. We kind of encourage the whole ‘married to their work’ image. Back when my grandparents were in the game, women quit once they were married. If not, they left when they got pregnant. Somebody needed to be home raising the little freaks, you know?”

“Children make good targets,” Jensen fills in.

“They do,” Jared agrees. “Over the years, you can see the press change away from highlighting heroes finding romance to more factual reporting. By the time my folks decided to have me, the Enforcers had tightened up on the press releases to only show us at our most heroic. As far as the public is concerned, we don’t have sex lives let alone children.”

“So emergency response plan,” Jensen reminds them both of why they’re talking.

“Yeah. Great. Let’s make some coffee first, huh?” Jared suggests.

“You just miss my barista skills,” Jensen teases as he gets up to work his magic on his decrepit coffee maker.

“Not true. I miss the way coffee makes you inhale and smile,” Jared counters. “Plus it buys me time before I have to start thinking about tactical plans.”

Jensen smiles and shakes his head. “I love you,” he says fondly.

Jared blinks at him. “What?”

“I just… I do. You know? Or, well, you didn’t know, and I thought you should. But it never seemed like the right moment, so I told myself that the next time you made me feel all warm and fuzzy, I’d tell you,” Jensen admits.

The dimples that Jared’s grin creates on his face look more like craters than anything human. “You love me,” he says with something akin to wonder.

“You’re lovable,” Jensen points out.

Jared grins harder and puffs out his chest, “I certainly am.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They don’t end up getting an apartment. For one thing, the emergency plans Jared submitted for it were more difficult to put into play. But the more important factor is that Jared fell in love with a house he drove by one day. Jensen could practically see the white picket fence and happily ever after dancing in his eyes when he described it to him that evening.

Their house is a cheesy, two bedroom affair that is bright yellow. It is solely in Jared’s name because Jensen refuses to put his signature on the title. He doesn’t believe in taking ownership of something he doesn’t pay for. He has had enough of charity.

His reticence on the matter doesn’t thrill Jared. As far as Jared is concerned, they’re a team. They are in it together and share. The whole concept is sweet, but Jensen is more of a pragmatist than that. Jared should be protected even if Jensen needs to protect him from himself.

That and Jensen sort of hates team references - mostly because he kind of hates the Enforcers and their paperwork.

“They’re not all like Crash and Shade,” Jared patiently explains again. “Once Dr. Zero heard about what they were doing, she put a stop to it.”

“Uh-huh,” Jensen agrees. It is true that Jared’s team seems to have backed off, but he can’t shake his feeling of distrust. More than that, Jensen doesn’t want to shake it.

But for Jared’s sake he tries. A house warming party sounds like a good idea. Not to him personally. Personally it sounds like hell. But for relationship purposes with Jared? It sounds like a good opportunity.

Jensen doesn’t have friends to invite. He burned his bridges with Traci, and he hasn’t exactly made new friends at the gas station. He knows a lot of people at the hospital, but intermingling socially with the people that have seen his innards neither appealing nor wise.

Jared picks out ‘the best’ of his teammates to come over. Ostensibly, they are his friends or at least are acquaintances who aren’t rude jackasses.

The guests don’t come in uniform, and for a second that throws Jensen. Then he realizes that it is unlikely he would be able to tell who is who anyway. He still cannot accurately say which superhero is his boyfriend, and he has sex with Jared on a regular basis.

Determined to relax, Jensen spends his time in the kitchen playing good host. He knows how to serve drinks and snacks. The routine of it gives him something to fall back on when he starts to feel overwhelmed.

Of course, being the food dispenser also draws attention. Superheroes have fast metabolisms. Jensen isn’t sure if it is pure genetics or workout routines, but they can pack away the calories. He thought at first that it was just a Jared thing, but the number of burgers and chicken wings he has gone through seems to indicate otherwise.

His most persistent admirer is a guy named D.J. The man is skinny and tall and in love with Jensen’s potato salad. It pleases Jensen that he likes it so much. Jensen isn’t admitting that fact to anybody though, especially not Jared.

The salad had started off with a recipe and finished with a sense memory. The final result doesn’t look anything like the picture in Jared’s cookbook. It is a bit of Jensen’s elusive past, and he can’t feel bad about its reappearance.

“Man, if you ever get tired of Jared, I’ll let you stay with me. Cooking for rent,” D.J. enthuses.

Normally Jensen gets comments about paying his rent with other talents, so he just smiles and shoves another plate of nachos in D.J.’s direction.

“What did I tell you about boyfriend stealing?” Jared asks as he shuffles into the kitchen. He is wearing flip-flops and a shirt so bright that Jensen can’t look at it long enough to decipher whether it is orange or pink.

“That it is wrong?” D.J. clearly guesses more than states. “I really quit listening after your ‘be nice to Jensen’ lecture went past the first five minutes.”

“Lecture?” Jensen asks.

Jared scowls at his friend, but D.J. just grins at him. “Man, he was so protective it was funny. I keep telling him to transfer to a different branch. East Coast Enforcers are assholes. Cali is where it is at.”

“I don’t know about California, but I can testify to the asshole part,” Jensen says, saluting D.J. with his beer bottle. Jensen isn’t allowed to drink much with the medications he is on, so he tries to keep his alcohol consumption on a slow track. He doesn’t like beer, so he drinks it because he never wants to finish one, and it makes him appear sociable.

Part of him wonders why he never developed a taste for the stuff. He feels like old Jensen was an everyday, middle class kind of guy. Those kinds of people drink beer. But his tongue and creepy sense memory seem to think that beer sucks.

Jared, of course, knows that Jensen dislikes beer. The funny look on his face as he watches Jensen sip from his bottle reminds Jensen of that fact.

“You want a scotch, Jense?” he asks as he moves towards their bar.

“Nah, I’m good,” Jensen replies as casually as possible. He can see the worry settle in on Jared’s face, so he lets the latest nickname go unremarked upon. “I’m fine,” he says before Jared can start asking about headaches or dizzy spells.

Screaming out in pain immediately after his announcement completely negates his statement. Jensen doesn’t know what is wrong with his head. He only knows that it is throbbing and pulsing and misfiring all sorts of synapses. His thighs feel like they’re on fire, his toes like they’re freezing, his throat like it is being attacked by a rabid lemon armed with razor blades.

Passing out seems like a great option. The disembodied voice of his boyfriend disagrees with that, but Jensen doesn’t care so much. Jared can bite him.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Jensen doesn’t wake up in a hospital. That fact alone isn’t so bad. What is bad is that his non-hospital place is not his home.

“Shh,” a low voice tells him as warn fingers brush over his forehead. “Just relax.”

Those aren’t Jared’s fingers or voice, so Jensen doesn’t even think about honoring the request. He has met a lot of nurses. Brow stroking isn’t in their handbook.

Even though Jensen is having a hard time focusing, he manages to blink his eyes enough times to make out the general shape and size of the man currently molesting his forehead. The guy is big, strong featured and broadly muscled. He looks like Jensen would have a hard time taking him even if his head wasn’t pounding.

“Always so stubborn,” the man huffs out in a laugh, lips quirking into a smile.

Alarm bells try to ring at the back of Jensen’s brain. They’re unwelcome. He just wants to close his eyes and return to unconscious bliss. But he can’t do that.

“Where am I?” Jensen manages to rasp out.

“Home,” the man says. “Baby, I thought you were dead.”

Those words make Jensen tense. He doesn’t let Jared get by with ‘Baby.’ He isn’t going to let some stranger. But the dude sounds honestly devastated, and Jensen isn’t heartless. Ignoring the emotional aspect all together sounds appealing. It also sounds like the best option for his throbbing skull. “Where is home, exactly?” he asks instead.

Concern flashes on the other man’s face. “You don’t know?”

Jensen sorely wants to debate within himself as to if he should answer that question. He has some serious concerns about what is going on. He maybe should consider the consequences of speaking.

There isn’t any way that Jensen was taken out of the hospital with Jared’s consent. But the stranger likely didn’t take Jensen without Jared’s consent either. Jensen made Jared his emergency contact and gave him medical decision power when they moved in together. Any valid medical practitioner would have to get Jared’s okay to move Jensen to a treatment facility.

There isn’t a scenario that springs to mind where Jared put Jensen into the care of some stranger that wants to call him ‘Baby.’ That means that ‘Baby’ guy has abducted Jensen. That isn’t the epitome of safe and sane. Giving him information isn’t a good idea.

But Jensen can’t seem to connect the dots enough to think through the consequences of his answers. He can understand the basic concepts and worries individually, but the logic chains aren’t coming together. Finally he gives up on trying and answers with, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. We’ll make it okay. Your father has a lot of contacts, and I’m just happy to have you back, Baby,” the man gushes.

“Don’t call me ‘Baby,’” Jensen snaps. To hell with being nice, his head hurts, and the stranger doesn’t own him.

“Still stubborn,” the man says fondly.

“I still don’t know what is going on,” Jensen reminds him. “I don’t know you,” he adds on almost vindictively. It isn’t nice, but Jensen has a boyfriend. It feels like cheating to allow the other man to keep his lovey-dovey act.

“Ty,” the man introduces offers a split second later. He extends his hand for a shake. Jensen doesn’t take it.

Hurt traipses over Ty’s face. “All right then,” he says slowly. “I’m guessing that I’m going to have to win you all over again if your dad can’t get your memories back.”

“I’m not on the market for winning,” Jensen informs him.

“You’re not serious.”

“We are, actually. Very serious.” Jensen purposefully ‘misunderstands’ Ty’s statement.

Ty looks like he wants to start an argument, but the arrival of another person keeps him from vocalizing it. “Ty, go see if Katie needs your help,” the new arrival orders. He has a beard and a little bit of a pot belly. He looks like the kind of guy who owns two dogs, one cat and a rusty truck – not the kind of guy who abducts people from hospital beds.

“Hey, Kiddo,” the man greets once Ty leaves.

“What is it with people giving me nicknames?” Jensen asks.

“I’m your father. I’m allowed,” the man responds as he settles into the chair that Ty vacated.

“Whatever you say, Darth Vader,” Jensen scoffs. He has seen actors who look more related to him.

New guy looks shocked and hurt for a mere second before his expression goes straight to pissed. “Memory problems?” he bites out.

Ty already knows that Jensen has some issues in that area, so he doesn’t bother trying to lie about them. It’ll get back around to beard-man sooner or later anyway. “A little bit, yeah,” he says.

“Those fucking bastards,” the man hisses. “Like they haven’t taken enough from me in my life.”

“Um,” Jensen says in lieu of anything witty. He overextended himself with the whole Star Wars quip, and now all his brain wants is to ache and think nonsensical thoughts about daisies and the kitchen linoleum that he had a fight with Jared over.

“You want something for the pain?” the man asks, his face instantly softening in concern. He is reaching for a pill bottle in the next breath, not waiting for a response.

Jensen isn’t sure that he should be taking anything from these people. He doesn’t know them, and he doubts that they have all of his prescriptions figured out. “I’m fine,” he says, “just tired.”

“Jensen, I’ve known you since you were six pounds of stubborn coming out of your mother’s womb. I know when you’re hurting.”

“Whatever,” Jensen decides to respond like a petulant teenager. He doesn’t have the brain capacity for an argument. Everything is starting to blur together, and he doesn’t care if rolling over and giving the man a clear shot of his back is a rude, potentially angering thing to do.

A few seconds later, he is out cold.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jensen’s latest brain injury isn’t terminal despite what doctors had warned him might happen if he suffered more head trauma. He wakes up to yet another stranger and an IV drip in his arm. He feels better, so they’re pumping some sort of drugs into him.

“You were going through withdrawals,” the woman sitting next to him states as soon as she notices that he is awake and staring at the needle going into his vein. “I’m Katie,” she tacks on, “because I have it on good authority that you won’t remember your best friend and ender of your virginity.”

“Oh God,” Jensen grumbles, “is everybody going to come in here telling me I porked them?”

Katie laughs and shakes her head. “We were awkward nineteen-year-olds facing the horror of becoming ‘real adults’ with v-cards. Don’t worry too much about it.”

“Classy,” Jensen grunts.

“Your idea,” Katie tells him.

“You could just be saying that,” Jensen points out, “not like I could argue.”

“True,” she concedes, “and I wouldn’t put it past myself either, so I can’t claim that my character doesn’t have that weakness.”

“So are you my jailer?” Jensen asks. “Because I find it hard to believe that there is always somebody by my bedside watching me drool for no other reason than to make sure I’m still breathing.”

“I’m your doctor for the moment,” she informs him. “Your medical records weren’t exactly easy to obtain with the way the Enforcers were swarming the hospital. Good thing they weren’t guarding the house so well.”

“You were in my home?” the idea makes Jensen feel violated in ways that being abducted hasn’t. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t even like the place all that much, but it is home. It is the place he was building with Jared and…

“You better not’ve fucking hurt him,” he threatens Katie. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if they did. But he knows that it’ll be something painful and awful even if it takes him years to plot their demise.

Katie chuckles and smiles at him. “The big bad boyfriend was not at home, and now Ty’s pouting makes so much more sense. You’ve got it bad for new boy, huh?”

“None of your business,” Jensen tells her.

“Oh come on,” Katie says, dismissing his own dismissal, “is he good in bed? How long did you make him grovel before you agreed to go out with him?”

“I’m not telling you how my boyfriend is at sex!”

“That bad, huh?”

“I don’t know you,” Jensen reminds her.

Katie seems to actually ponder that for a moment. “True, but when you’ve decided that you just can’t keep the awesomeness of wonder man’s cock to yourself, you know that I’ll be all ears.”

“I’d rather you tell me what is going on right now,” Jensen says.

“Long story short? Your locator beacon got activated, and we busted you out of the hospital. Only you are on some pretty interesting meds for your brain injury, so you started going through withdrawals in addition to the new injury that having your locator go off inside your brain caused.”

“New injury?” Jensen echoes even though it makes sense. He didn’t for one second think that everything was fine.

“Your transponder wasn’t supposed to be implanted inside you. Foreign electrical emissions inside your noggin can do bad stuff, and before you ask, that is very much a professional diagnosis.”

“I’m glad my brain is a source of such amusement to you,” Jensen snaps.

“Would you rather I go on a rant about how it could’ve almost killed you again? Because I can do that, but I think we both recognize that little fact already. I kind of figured levity would be the better option.”

“Answers would be a better option,” Jensen clarifies for her. “So far I’ve met three people that I don’t know, and none of them seem to care to inform me about things that I would actually like to know. Say, for example, why I had a locator on me in the first place.”

“I would think that you would’ve put that puzzle together by yourself by now,” Katie observes. “You were injured in a gigantic fight between the Enforcers and the Liberation League. You had a transponder on you. The Enforcers didn’t come and cart you off to their white washed little bastion of secrecy, now did they?”

“So what? I used to be some sort of spy?”

Katie looks at him like he’s just grown another head. “Maybe your brain damage goes deeper than I thought. You’re Danser, Jensen.”

Jensen laughs until the sound of his own voice makes his head pound too thickly. “That is fucking ridiculous. Try another one on the amnesiac. Seriously, you had me going with all the earnestly and crap, but you really need to learn to lie better. Danser,” Jensen mocks sarcastically.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Believe you? I wouldn’t buy your movie script for Lifetime. The leaps of logic in it are astounding. I mean, the buildup was good, but you can’t make a non-powered person believe that he used to be this ultra-badass super villain.”

“You’re not a villain,” Katie contests, eyes filling with anger. “How can you say that about us? You know… well you don’t know, but they’re the ones who have the public duped. The Enforcers have this veneer of righteousness hiding their seedy underbelly of politics. You’re a hero.”

“I’m a gas station attendant,” Jensen corrects her. “And you can go fuck your kidnapping self with a pogo stick. Goodbye.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

“You people don’t give up, do you?” Jensen asks as his ‘father’ comes into his room with a large, flat panel monitor.

“I don’t give up my son, no,” the man answers. “You’re obstinate and mule headed, but this isn’t nearly as bad as you’ve gotten before.”

“Great. I was an asshole in your prior life. No wonder ‘I’ don’t want to remember that,” Jensen says.

‘Dad’ grunts and fiddles around with the electrical socket for a moment before the screen blinks to life. The sudden change in the lighting in the room doesn’t make Jensen wince or cause his head to hurt, so he figures that his meds must’ve finally balanced themselves out in his system. That, at least, he can be thankful for.

“You used to hate that I made home movies,” Jensen’s ‘father’ informs him, “Now I can’t even take pleasure in being able to tell you, ‘I told you so.’”

“Did you at least bring popcorn?” Jensen quips as typical, homemade, shaky camera shots start filling the screen. They aren’t videos of a ‘young Jensen’ playing or doing typical cute kid crap. Instead, they are of a young man who looks very much like the person that Jensen sees in the mirror every day.

The ‘Jensen’ in the film is younger and has longer hair. His voice is far higher in pitch, but the determined scowl on his face is the same one that Jensen had seen in the physical therapy room mirrors as he forced himself into learning how to walk again.

But the Jensen in the video isn’t learning anything so basic. That ‘Jensen’ is clearly trying to levitate a stack of textbooks. The results are mixed, but Jensen’s face splits into a grin each time he is successful. Off screen, ‘Dad’s’ voice can be heard cheering his son on.

“Doctored footage,” Jensen proclaims the instant the video is finished.

“In the short amount of time you’ve been here? All of these?” ‘Dad’ asks as he clicks open a file and hundreds of thumbnails populate the screen – Jensen’s mug in all of them. “You can watch them all if you want. None of them are duplicates or whatever tricks you might think we pulled to ‘fake’ them.”

“Who knows how long you’re been planning this? I mean, you are the Liberation League, right? There is a reason you’re so infamous, being sloppy isn’t part of that reason,” Jensen counters.

“Great. Now you’re a conspiracy theorist. These aren’t faked, Jensen.”

“And I don’t believe you. This could all just be some sort of elaborate plot.”

“To do what? Infiltrate middleclass suburbia? Take over the local Fast-n-Qwick? Unnecessarily expose ourselves to the Enforcers?”

“Maybe you just wanted to throw them off your true plans,” Jensen reasons, though his heart is pounding. It doesn’t sound like they know about Jared being one of the Enforcers. If they don’t know, that could be a good thing so long as Jensen doesn’t spill the beans.

But then… if they don’t know about Jared, why did they pick Jensen to be their target?

“What plans? Jensen, the world doesn’t work like the movies do. Most of our efforts are covert. You don’t bring down an organization like that by making martyrs of them.”

“How am I supposed to know what your plan is?” Jensen shoots back. “I am your prisoner.”

The other man sighs and shakes his head sadly. “I suppose that a DNA test wouldn’t help you with realizing the truth, would it?” he asks.

“Spending a lot of time in hospitals hasn’t made me a doctor,” Jensen points out, “Though I don’t know why that would stop you from trying. After all, you seem set on attempting to convince me that I have superpowers – that takes a lot more conviction than waving the results of a paternity test around does.”

“You are my son,” the man says firmly. “Just because I look like I do – doesn’t make that fact not true.”

“How very rhyme-y of you,” Jensen quips.

“Dammit, Jensen! If you ever were captured, your smart mouth would land you in so much trouble. God only knows what would be happening to you right now if we hadn’t beaten those bastards to the hospital.”

Jensen figures he would be at home. Jared would likely be snuggling him and attempting to discuss what color to paint the bathroom. He doesn’t think that ‘Dad’ wants to hear that theory though.

“What is your name?” he asks instead.

“What?”

“Your name,” Jensen repeats, “what is it? I’m obviously not going to call you ‘Dad,’ so it would be nice to call you something other than ‘you.’”

The hurt on the older man’s face seems genuine, but Jensen brushes his answering feeling of sympathy aside. The man had to have known that the question was coming. There had been plenty of time to brush on up on his acting skills.

“Jim,” the man answers, “Jim Beaver.”

“That sounds familiar,” Jensen admits.

“Well don’t worry about it. The name should, and it has nothing to do with you being my boy. About thirty-two years ago, the Enforcers shot me out of the sky and left me for dead too. Those bastards have some real symmetry going for them, let me tell you.”

Jim pauses and looks away for a moment before turning back to Jensen. “Where you and me differ is that I was a case of not-so-friendly fire. See, back in the day I used to be an Enforcer.”

“You defected?”

“I was hung out to dry by my best friend,” Jim corrects. “One moment I’m working surveillance on a suspected crime ring, next thing I know I’m waking up in a garbage dump on the other side of the world. Bastard literally threw me away with the trash. Of course, recuperating from that took some time and getting back home took even longer. I didn’t exactly speak the native language, and I wasn’t left in a well-populated, metropolitan area.”

“But you did make it out,” Jensen observes.

“Eventually, yeah. But the part of my brain that controls my powers got fried. Flight? That came back after a while. Shape shifting? Not so much. It is hard to convince anybody that you’re a six-foot tall super star when you look like I do now.”

“Nobody believed you were you,” Jensen guesses the next part of the tale.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Jim tells him, a wry twist to his mouth. “My good buddy Mitch Pileggi sure did. He gave me a real good understanding of what being a chump is.”

“You didn’t know that he was the one to leave you stranded,” Jensen surmises.

“You always were a smart boy,” Jim opines. “And, yeah, I went to him looking for answers. I thought that something must’ve happened. I must’ve been taken captive and then left for dead.”

“And he told you otherwise?” Jensen asks.

“Oh, yeah. Don’t get me wrong, he was shocked to see me. Thought for sure I would’ve died from being left in a rotting garbage dump with open wounds. I’m surprised that he admitted it all to me, but I guess having a ‘dead man’ show up on your doorstep in the middle of the night might catch a guy off guard.”

“He admitted it? Like full-on, bad villain monologue style?”

Jim nods. “Yeah. I guess he figured there wasn’t much I could do about it. I didn’t look like ‘me’ any longer, and who was going to believe my story against a national hero who had just lost his ‘best friend?’”

“That’s rough,” Jensen observes.

“No,” Jim disagrees, “what is rough is finding out that your fiancée started sleeping with your best friend before you were even cold in your hypothetical grave. What is rough is watching her wedding to him internationally televised five months after your ‘death’ with your picture displayed alongside them and a memorial speech saying that you’re looking down on them from heaven, giving them your blessing.”

“Okay, that’s rougher,” Jensen concedes.

Jim snorts. “You have no idea.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you’re running this Liberation League, attacking the Enforcers.”

“Because they’re rotten on the inside. We don’t attack for the sake of attacking. We go on the offensive to gain information,” Jims explains.

“Your attacks are decoys?” Jensen asks.

Jim smiles and places the computer in Jensen’s lap. “Maybe. Now have fun watching yourself. I’ll be back later.”

Jensen watches him leave before clicking on the internet connection tab at the bottom of the screen. Somehow he isn’t surprised to see that it has been disabled.

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“Hey, Baby,” Ty says as he struts through the door. Jensen does his best not to freeze in his tracks. For the past few days, he has slowly been working on his mobility. He is farther along than he has admitted to either Katie or Jim. He doesn’t need to break his deception streak with Ty.

So he feigns weakness as he limps back to the couch that he had just investigated. Ty rushes over to support him, large hand shooting out to cup Jensen’s elbow, “Easy,” he councils.

Jensen scowls and pulls his arm away, crashing down on the sofa in the process.

Ty laughs. “Sorry, but you looked like a pissed off kitten.”

“Don’t call me ‘Baby,’” Jensen belatedly lectures.

Ty raises his hands in surrender and helps himself to the other end of the couch. “Thought you might like some company,” he says.

“What makes you think that?” Jensen asks. Jim and Katie he gets. Their stories make sense at least. But Jensen doesn’t understand the addition of an ex-boyfriend in their little mind bending scheme. Sure, he had to have dated before, that is just part of being a reasonably attractive adult.

But even if he fell prey to their scheme and believed that he was Danser, the fight that took him out was over two years ago. The villain was pronounced dead. Ty and the rest have admitted to thinking that ‘Jensen’ was dead. Lovers move on. They don’t hang around waiting for their loved ones to come back to life.

“Jim and Katie said you were getting prickly and antsy. I figured you might want a different friendly face. Just the two of them for company could drive any man a bit crazy.”

“A little bit,” Jensen admits. “Although it is more their presence at all. I’d prefer to be left alone.”

Ty whistles low and shifts closer. “They weren’t kidding about your attitude.”

“Fathom not enjoying the company of your abductors,” Jensen says. Part of him wishes that they would treat him badly. He is being rude. They should be taking offense, but all they ever look is hurt. Their reactions are making doubts and questions grow in Jensen’s mind that he doesn’t want.

“I know it looks that way, but we are trying to protect you. Those bastard Enforcers almost beat us to the punch. If we had been a few minutes later, we wouldn’t be talking right now. They would be interrogating you or worse.”

“How do you know that?” Jensen asks. “Have you ever been captured by them?”

Ty’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he admits, “I’ve always been too fast for them.”

“Then you don’t know, now do you?”

“I know they would arrest you. I know that they don’t love you, know you. I’m not sure why you think the Enforcers would treat you well when they destroyed so much property in their attempt to kill you.”

“Because I’m not Danser?” Jensen suggests. It has been his go to argument for days now, and it never fails to eventually drive his captors off in exasperation. He’d give them points for being so dedicated to their stories, but he’d have to take those points right back again for creating such an absurd fantasy in the first place.

“I think I know the man I fell in love with at first sight,” Ty argues. “I’m not the type to mistake another man for my lover.”

“You’re the type that organizes attacks against known government agencies,” Jensen counters. “I don’t expect you to tell the truth.”

“Corrupt government agencies,” Ty corrects.

“Based on what? Jim’s tale of woe? Even if that yarn is true, that was one person a long time ago.”

“A long time ago? Sugar, those Enforcers make being a superhero a career. Good old Mitch is riding high in the organization, and you’re a fool if you think he has changed and his masked troupe aren’t even worse than he was.”

“Get the fuck out of my prison cell, Asshole,” Jensen says coldly, “and don’t come back again until you can say my name correctly.”

“Whoa. What did I…”

“Out,” Jensen orders again. “You don’t get to call me condescending pet names.”

“I just…”

“Now,” Jensen growls.

Ty acquiesces and leaves. Jensen hears him muttering something about grumpy bastards as he goes, so Jensen flips him off. He doesn’t think Ty sees the action, but he doesn’t care. It makes him feel better.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Wherever Jensen his, he is well hidden. Days have been slipping by with no rescue. Though he is allowed to leave his room and wander about, there isn’t much to see. Doors are locked. Windows aren’t, but they just lead to an outdoors that seems to have an endless sea of nature around it – and a giant drop off. Jensen doesn’t think he should chance a third major brain injury by trying to free climb down a sheer rock face.

Whatever the Liberation League’s motivations, they obviously have the financing for them. Giant compounds on mountain tops can’t come cheap.

The only people that Jensen sees day in and day out are Jim, Ty and Katie. He isn’t stupid enough to think that they’re it. The League cannot be so small. But it makes sense that they’re not sharing more information with him. He has made it clear that he isn’t on their side or even close to believing them.

Sure, he has his doubts. They’re growing by the day despite his personal resolution otherwise. The videos of ‘Jensen’ are too real looking. He can’t find the flaws that prove that they’re fakes. And his captors aren’t hurting him. They are trying, for certain, to make him trust them, but that isn’t the cause of Jensen’s wavering.

Their reactions are more the source of his concern. They act as if he is hurting them by not letting them in close. Jensen knows, though he doesn’t remember where he learned it, that brainwashing involves invoking sympathy for the abuser, but he can’t help but feel like their reactions are something more than a simple control ploy.

The logic of him as an abduction choice is also suspect. He has watched them carefully, and still hasn’t seen them tip their hand about Jared. If they don’t know about Jensen’s romantic tie to the Enforcers, why did they choose him? Did they think that his amnesia would make him that easy of a target to manipulate? That the source of his injuries was enough to satisfy the requirements of whatever plan it is that they have going?

The questions keep cropping up in Jensen’s mind no matter how hard he fights against them. He refuses to consider the prospect that they might not be lying. The thought of it makes him ill. He loves Jared. He cannot be his enemy. The idea that he could turn out to be somebody so repugnant is a possibility Jensen refuses to consider.

It is almost a relief when Jensen runs out of pills and finds himself having to take new medications. Jensen’s regimen hasn’t changed for months. Once the doctors had figured out the right cocktail of painkillers and seizure control tabs he needed to take, they hadn’t messed with it. He knows the size, weight and color of his pills. He knows when he is supposed to take them and if he can swallow them on an empty stomach or if he needs food with them. Jensen has had the name brand and generic versions, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that his blend has been changed.

Insane as it is, Jensen tries to rationalize away the replacements. First he thinks that maybe they just made a mistake. Accidents happen. Even his pharmacist has goofed on occasion. But that doesn’t make sense. His captors seem to be the type that double check things.

Then he thinks that maybe they couldn’t obtain the right stuff. Pharmaceuticals aren’t exactly easy to come by after all. But then… they managed to get him something. Why not the right something? If it was an error because of a grab and run, why not mention it to him?

And why would they be performing a grab and run at all? Jensen knows that it isn’t that difficult to get a prescription from a doctor. The pill junkies that he used to sit next to in waiting rooms had been all too willing to share their tips and tricks. It is all a matter of finding the right doctor at the right time and rotating out hospitals and clinics. Given the fact that he is being held prisoner in a mountain top estate, he is willing to bet that travel isn’t a huge concern of theirs.

Of course, Jensen is also ascribing same modicum of concern to his captors with his process. The realization scares him. He shouldn’t be believing their words. He should be ascribing only the worst of motivations to them. He isn’t Danser. He can’t be. What sort of moron would he have to be to believe that?

They have called him Jensen from the beginning. That is his name, fair enough. But it is the name that Jensen feels is his own. He thinks that he remembers it. He has no proof that it is his name. If it truly is his, he has no reason to believe that it is his first name. Jensen is traditionally a surname. The likelihood that he was right about it is minimal. They have been lying to him since the beginning, and he has to hold onto that.

The problem is that Jensen doesn’t know what is in the new pills. He only recognizes a painkiller in the mix, so he takes that. Not taking his medications could end up crippling him, but taking foreign pills could cause an even worse reaction.

Throwing the bottle of pills at Katie when she walks into his room might not be the best way to open up a dialogue about the change in his regimen, but Jensen isn’t in the mood for niceties. His head is starting to feel funny. He isn’t stupid enough to think that his captors won’t win. Once he is out for the count, they can pump him full of whatever chemicals they want. He might as well give them hell while he is still lucid.

“What are you doing to me?” he demands of her. “What is that shit?”

Katie nudges the little orange bottle with the toe of her boot and sighs. “I told them that you’d notice.”

“Oh, how kind,” Jensen says. “You thought I had two brain cells to rub together.”

“You know, you need to get laid,” Katie tells him. “You always get like this when your nookie meter isn’t full.”

“Fuck you,” Jensen says. “I am not chained to my libido.” He misses Jared like crazy, but he doesn’t think that lack of Padalecki kisses are his motivating factor for being cranky. Being held against his will has the top spot dominated. He is more than his sex drive. Besides that, one of his pills has a decreased sex drive side effect so Katie is just completely wrong and trying to distract him.

Katie makes a face at him and picks the pill bottle up. “Look, your pills were screwing with the section of your brain that controls your powers. They were effectively neutering you. So we got you some different ones.”

“Oh, so you’re all doctors now?” Jensen asks.

“Not us, no,” Katie admits. “But our doctor observed you and took a look at your blood work and…”

“Observed me?” Jensen cuts in.

“You don’t honestly think that you’re not monitored, do you? Once you made it obvious that you’d succumbed to the media hype and brainwashing, we had to make certain that you weren’t going to hurt us or yourself by doing something stupid. By the way, you’re a sneaky bastard even if half your grey matter is masquerading as bad mashed potatoes.”

“Thank you,” Jensen says, making sure his sarcasm is on full throttle. “It means so much that you think so highly of my skill sets.”

“We’re just trying to help,” Katie points out as she sets the pills bottle back down on his nightstand. “Once you regain your powers…”

“You mean once your hallucinogenics work their magic,” Jensen interrupts.

“Wow, you have a really active imagination,” Katie tells him.

“Not as good as yours,” Jensen counters. “You can take your poison back,” he tells her as he picks the bottle up that she just put down. “I won’t be taking any of those.”

“Jensen,” her voice takes on the distinct sound of pleading, “you need something to keep you from having seizures. Even if you didn’t need the medications anymore, going cold turkey is…”

“I know,” Jensen tells her. “I’m way, way more aware of what happens in my head than you are. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. It is my choice. If you want to drug me, you can do it after I’m spasming on the floor, okay?”

“Dammit, Jensen,” Katie huffs, “don’t be stubborn about this. I don’t want you getting hurt again.”

Jensen eyes her coldly. “It is a little too late for that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You really are too stubborn for your own good,” Jim’s voice wakes Jensen up.

The room is too bright, but that is the least of his concerns. He can feel an intravenous tube taped to his arm. The tug of a needle in his vein is depressingly familiar. He has woken up like this before. At least this time he still has some memories on tap.

“I should’ve told you ‘no,’” Jim continues when Jensen doesn’t say anything in response. “I should’ve said that your plan to get into the Enforcers’ headquarters was too risky, but we were so close. We were so close, and you were so damned good at what you did. I still don’t know how that bastard took you out. Crush is as dumb as a box of rocks. He didn’t inherit his old man’s savvy or his momma’s charm.”

“I’m really confused right now,” Jensen admits. “And I feel terrible,” he tacks on.

“You should and you should,” Jim informs him. “I’d apologize for it, but when I’m informed that my only child is going to attempt to stroke himself out by not taking his medication, well, I don’t react well to that. You don’t take well to sedation, but I figure it’s better than the alternatives.”

“Great,” Jensen mutters, “so you shot me full of drugs without my consent. And, oh, would you look at that! I’m tied down too. Awesome.”

“Nobody was willing to vouch for you not taking out your IV,” Jim explains.

“Yeah, can’t blame you there,” Jensen agrees. “I’d rip that sucker out right now, gotta be honest.”

“I know that you’re probably upset with me…”

“Actually, I’m oddly happy about this. I was waiting for you people to show your true colors, and you finally have,” Jensen puts as much self-righteous indignation into his words as he can. There isn’t much he can do when he is strapped down to a bed getting drugs pumped into his system, but his mouth still works.

Jim, as per usual, just looks hurt. “You’ll see in time,” he says.

Jensen doesn’t bother pointing out that future his highly unlikely. He has a feeling Jim already knows.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The worst part about being unwillingly subjected to medications turns out to be the bed pan situation. Jensen has been in this position before. Catheters suck and hot nurses are a myth. Nobody looks good when they’re wiping down your bedridden ass.

Thankfully, his captors aren’t set on humiliating him to that degree. He has a little call button that he likes to call his ‘potty time’ switch. Somebody always comes to help him do his business when he pushes it. Of course, he doesn’t need their help with the exception of the buckles on the straps keeping him to the bed, but they don’t seem too concerned about that.

He could fight getting back into the bed, but he doesn’t. There is brashness and then there is stupidity. Jensen knows that he doesn’t have anywhere to run to even if he does manage to make it out of the compound.

Whatever drugs they have been giving him, they have been cutting the dosages on. There have been withdrawal symptoms, but nothing too horribly uncomfortable. But shaking, sweating and having the chills isn’t exactly torture. Torture is the endless loop going on in his mind asking what, exactly, these people are doing to his body.

Jensen knows that he feels different. That doesn’t surprise him. Even though his memories of being drug free center around the fact that he was in pain and having massive blackouts, he does know that his perceptions have been muted because of the pills that he takes. It happens, and he is okay with the side effects.

But his body is definitely not on what it was before. He expected that, but he didn’t expect to feel so different. He has been on a myriad of drugs. This feels like he isn’t on much at all.

Part of him wants to rage about being denied his basic human rights. A bigger part of him is relieved, and he feels horrible about that. How sad is it that he is actually happy to be treated poorly? Their actions make everything simple for him. Jensen is taking the easy way out.

His first seizure hits around five in the evening. It is always so, so weird when it happens. His environment jerks away from him, looking blurry and indistinct before his brain fritzes out and starts telling him that the whole world is made of pristine, glass like edges and more colors than he can imagine.

Jensen doesn’t feel like he is floating away, even though that is what he always told his doctors when they asked. What he feels is that he could simply cut away the strings that bind him to the earth. But even when he was a mass of flesh and walking staples, he had known better than to admit that. Psych wards weren’t fun to be in, and he spent enough time in therapy for his memory problems.

Eventually the confusing images that his brain insists are there get to be too much for Jensen. He passes out, and when he wakes up, Katie is sitting next to him reading a book. She doesn’t look concerned or upset. She actually looks happy.

Jensen tries not to be happy in response even though his instinct is to smile back at her. Her face at the moment is another brick in his wall of defense against their attempts to brainwash him. But Katie dropping her guard is no excuse for Jensen to drop his.

“So I didn’t die,” Jensen croaks out.

“Nope,” Katie tells him, “you did exactly what we thought you were going to do.”

“Have a seizure? Hate to break it to you, but that theory wasn’t exactly a thrilling and new one.”

Katie snorts and throws her book on down on the bed next to Jensen. The cover features two very sweaty, muscle bound men kissing each other. Jensen stares at it fascination for a moment. The contortions are highly unrealistic. Jared is very ripped. He could lift Jensen if he wanted to, but Jensen doubts that Jared could hold him upright as they made out. At least, Jared would need support like a wall or something.

“Hey, you still in there?” Katie asks, waving her hand before Jensen’s eyes.

Jensen blinks and shakes his head, making himself focus. He hasn’t had a seizure in ages, not since the first couple of months that he worked at the coffee shop. But he can remember how tired he becomes after each one and how easily distracted he can be.

“Still recuperating,” Jensen grunts honestly. He watches her face for any signs of guilt about what she and the others are putting him through, but there is none.

“You always were like that. Back, you know, before you turned into this kickass super warrior,” she amends.

“What?” Jensen asks. His can feel his upper lip curling up in confusion. Now they’re trying to tell him that he has always had seizures? That doesn’t make sense, and Jensen feels he is justified in pointing that little fact out. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Katie rolls her eyes at him and grabs her laptop, clicking a few keys. The flat panel in the room flares to life, and Jensen instinctively flinches, eyes snapping shut. He has never had a triggered episode, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have one either. Prevention is key.

“You’re fine,” Katie assures him.

He doesn’t exactly trust her, so he keeps his eyes shut.

“Jensen, you’re fine because you don’t have seizures. You probably never have.”

That makes Jensen’s eyes pop open. Because, wow, there really is only so much bullshit a man can take.

“It’s just your powers trying to manifest,” she tells him.

Jensen gapes at her. He cannot form the words to tell her what an idiot she is, but he tries anyway. All that comes out is random sputters of incredulity.

“Look,” she says as she hits the play button on the computer. The screen floods with video of Jensen writhing on the bed. His eyes are rolling back in his head, and he is whimpering.

That looks a hell of a lot like a seizure to him.

“No,” Katie says, anticipating his observation, “look.”

Against his will, Jensen directs his gaze back to the horrifying scene on the screen. Nobody wants to see themselves in such a state, so he tries to keep his eyes focused on other things - the plant in the corner of the room, for example or the stacks of magazines that Ty has faithfully been bringing him like some sort of courtship presents. But doing that isn’t the greatest of ideas because those objects start to move on the screen.

At first, Jensen thinks he is just trying too hard to avoid the sight of himself in distress. A man’s eyes can play tricks on him when he focuses too much, but that isn’t it. The objects in the room are randomly starting to jerk around. They’re in sync with his writhing.

It could be some trick cinematography. He’s been out of it, and a few special effects buttons could probably make everything look real. It could be, so that is what Jensen is going to believe.

“Shut it off,” Jensen orders Katie.

“No,” she replies simply.

“I don’t want to watch this,” Jensen tells her like she couldn’t figure that out on her own.

“Shut if off yourself,” she tells him.

“I can’t,” Jensen reminds her, lifting a hand that is still chained to his bedside.

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to watch this until reality sinks into your thick skull, now won’t you?” she retorts.

That makes Jensen mad. The anger and helplessness that he has been feeling since the moment that he woke up in that hospital without a fucking clue about his life comes bubbling to the surface. It is aided by his worries that he’ll never get free from his captors. It is propelled by that tiny voice deep in his gut that fears that Jared is going to move on, find somebody else. The magazines have been reminding Jensen of the time that has been passing. Every hour that he is where he is, is another hour that Jared has to forget about him.

“SHUT IT OFF!” He yells. The lights flicker and go out, and the buzz of live electricity fills the air.

“Always with the damned wiring,” Katie laments. “What the hell do you have against it anyway?”

Jensen barely hears her. He is busy staring at the way that all of the electrical cords in the room have snapped. Some of the wires are close enough to each other that there are sparks arcing between them, but it doesn’t last long. The room goes eerily quiet as the breaker flips and cuts off the electrical supply to the outlets.

“I didn’t do that,” the denial springs instantly to Jensen’s lips even though he knows, knows he is lying.

Katie doesn’t correct him or even roll her eyes at him. She just reaches over and takes his larger hand between her own and gives it a squeeze. “Welcome home,” she tells him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jim comes and moves Jensen to a different room on the other side of the compound. It is just as non-descript as the other one that he had been kept in, so Jensen doesn’t think it is ‘his.’ It doesn’t feel like home or even familiar, and it comforts him. Jensen doesn’t think he could handle echoes of familiarity in his skull at the moment.

Deep down, he had always sort of wanted to know the truth about his history. Even though he had moved past it and accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to have all of his memories come rushing back in like happens in soap operas, he hadn’t ever let go of that little dream. Realizing his dream sucks.

Jensen tries to reason that it would be different if he actually had his memories instead of learning about them. Obviously Danser was pretty committed to the cause. He had questionable taste in men, but Jensen can’t say that Jared doesn’t fit his ‘type.’ Large, smiles a lot, likes pet names…

Crying isn’t an option. Jensen won’t let it be. But his heart still breaks a little bit at the thought of telling Jared. He had known that he was in love with the other man, but he hadn’t realized how much. If he had known, he maybe would’ve treated Jared a little better. Maybe he would’ve let him get by with a few more pet names and given in a little more often.

Jensen knows that you don’t sleep with the enemy. Upright guys don’t fool around with the bad boys. It isn’t done no matter what the clichés say. But he loves Jared. He doesn’t want to let him go. Assuming, of course, that Jared is still Jensen’s to let go. Maybe he has moved on. Maybe the reason that Jensen hasn’t been rescued is that they know who his body used to be, and they’re presuming he was using Jared.

The thought makes him feel ill. Because he would think it. He knows he would think all sorts of terrible things about himself if he put himself in Jared’s shoes. Worse, he knows exactly what he would think if he was in Crush’s boots.

What possibly can Jensen’s excuse be? He doesn’t remember? How can he prove that? How on Earth can he show them that he was really just dating Jared because he was smitten with the man? Their relationship is just a touch too convenient for belief.

Jensen tries to make himself think of something else. He tries to consider the politics of the situation instead. Maybe he really doesn’t believe in the Enforcers. He never gave it much thought before Jared told him he was a member. They were inconsequential to his everyday struggles. After that, they were just these people who annoyed him because they made his relationship with Jared difficult.

They were assholes, mostly, but he had sort of understood where they were coming from. Beyond that he hadn’t considered what they did. Jared was a part of them, and Jared was a standup guy. Jared couldn’t be a part of an organization that was doing the wrong thing.

But… Jared had admitted that he was raised by other Enforcers. Maybe he didn’t know any better. Then again, Jensen doesn’t remember being raised. His ideals and morals were just sort of there when he woke up. What he didn’t instinctually lean towards, he developed as he needed to face certain situations.

That thought brings with it a whole slew of other ideas to consider. Jensen isn’t Danser. That much is certain. As much as he has instinctive impulses that he doesn’t always understand, Jensen doesn’t have some strong belief in the Liberation League’s cause. Danser did.

But how different can he really be when so much of who he is has been bubbling up from his subconscious? He has actively encouraged his old preferences to the forefront. Isn’t he the stupid idiot who kept drinking his coffee black when he preferred it a different way?

Jensen isn’t some made from scratch person. He had needed to go to physical and psychological therapy, but he hadn’t needed to relearn the alphabet even though he had some issues with his vocabulary at first. Doctors had reminded him time and time again how lucky he was to have so few problems given the extent of his injuries.

“You always did like to brood,” Ty’s voice is almost fond as he walks into Jensen’s room without so much as knocking.

Jensen would call him on it, but he is actually grateful for the interruption. His own thoughts had been getting him nowhere.

“I’m not sure ‘like’ is the right word,” Jensen says.

“I brought you some more magazines. And chocolates too,” Ty offers, placing a box down with the week’s latest selection of gossip rags and news. “Figured you might finally be over the idea that I’m trying to poison you with them.”

Jensen shrugs and knocks the top off the box, staring down at the assortment. He knows which ones Jared loves, so he automatically avoids picking one of them up. It is ridiculous because Jared isn’t going to be there to eat them, but letting go of the habit isn’t something that Jensen is ready to do. Eating one of the treats seems like the world’s greatest betrayal, like he is letting go of ‘them’ if he does it.

“Huh,” Ty comments as he watches Jensen take a bite, “you know, I actually thought you’d hold out longer.”

“It’s just chocolate,” Jensen defends himself. He hadn’t really been thinking that Ty would see his acceptance in a different light. He should have.

“Not the candy,” Ty says, watching a bit too closely as Jensen puts his half bitten chocolate back down into the box. “You being you. I thought you’d keep up the denial thing until you started going invisible. I was all geared up to argue with you about how we didn’t rig the room to make it look like you destroyed the wiring in a powers discharge.”

“Seemed pointless,” Jensen admits. Sure he could’ve kept going, but his own story had started to seem pathetic. It all kept coming back to the fact that they didn’t know about his tie to the Enforcers. If they didn’t have that, their reasons for taking him were dubious at best. Adding on the extra details had tipped the logic scales in their favor.

“You want to ask any questions?” Ty asks.

“About what?”

“Anything,” Ty replies with a shrug and an easy smile. “I know you. You’ve got a head full of things you want to know about.”

Jensen wants to tell the guy that he doesn’t know Jensen, he knows Danser. There is a difference between them – a big, Jared shaped difference that Jensen isn’t giving up on despite what logic says he should do. But Ty did know Danser, and Jensen needs information no matter how badly he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Why do you think the doctors diagnosed me with seizures?” is the first question that makes its way out. Jensen doesn’t expect an answer, but it isn’t personally threatening to the life he wants to hold onto, so he asks it.

“Leading theory is that they just didn’t notice. Our powers come from our bodies. Yours was pretty messed up. I’m guessing there wasn’t much to see at first, and it isn’t the sort of thing physicians look for period, let alone in older patients.”

Jensen supposes that makes sense. He doesn’t remember anybody saying that anything weird happened after one of his episodes. Medical professionals were usually trying to reassure him that he was going to be fine. The one time that Traci had seen him…

Just like that, Traci’s fervent dislike of Jared becomes clear. The other times that Jensen had a fit had happened in hospitals. He’d either been surrounded by doctors or other patients who were just as sick as he was. There had been three times when he’d been alone in his rat trap apartment, but other than that his medications had worked. But the time that he’d had a fit at work had been the strongest one by far.

Traci knew. She had known who Jensen was, and she hadn’t told him. He isn’t sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, she was trying to protect him. On the other hand, she had withheld information from him that he deserved to know.

“My life is screwed up,” Jensen laments.

Ty smiles at him. “It’ll be fine,” he assures him. “You’re home now.”

“This isn’t home,” Jensen points out. He isn’t going to let that change. Home is a cheesy, yellow, two bedroom house that his boyfriend owns. Home is with the man that he is in love with – at least until he hears otherwise from Jared’s lips.

“Jensen, you can’t go back there. They’ll be looking for you,” Ty reasons.

“I have a boyfriend,” Jensen reminds him.

“Oh for…” Ty rolls his eyes and before Jensen can figure out what is going on, Ty has pulled him into his arms.

 

“Wha…” Jensen doesn’t get the word out of his mouth before Ty’s is covering it. Ty’s beard scratches ever so slightly against Jensen’s skin. He freezes at the contact, eyes wide and unfocused.

Ty lets his mouth go and backs up a bit, smirk firmly in place.

“Y-y-you,” Jensen stutters out.

“Not quite speechless? Must me losing my touch,” Ty says as he yanks Jensen closer and kisses him again.

Jensen isn’t expecting it anymore the second time than he was the first, but his eyes are still open, and they manage to lock gazes with Jared’s eyes. And… okay, Jensen is officially losing his mind because he is so not cheating. He isn’t. He is being taken advantage of, and there is no reason to be hallucinating about his boyfriend’s disembodied peepers.

Still, the sight of those orbs gives him a certain amount of creeped out adrenalin that has him shoving Ty away and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jensen demands.

“Reminding you why you love me,” Ty says smugly. He hasn’t turned around, so he hasn’t seen the eyeballs floating in the air behind him. Not that there are eyeballs there, because there aren’t. Jensen is just going insane.

“I don’t love you!” he yells, keeping his eyes focused on Ty’s face instead of Jared’s so-not-there-eyeballs. “I didn’t want you to kiss me.”

“Bullshit, Jen. I know you. I know us. Just because you don’t remember…”

“I have a boyfriend,” Jensen interrupts. “I love him, not you.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend anymore. Even if Mr. Average is out there pining for you, do you really think he is going to be able to handle the truth? He’s a fling, Baby. I’m the real deal.”

“You’re a real something, alright,” Jensen scoffs. “Get out of my room. Take these with you,” he orders, shoving the chocolates into Ty’s arms.

Ty looks down at the box and shakes his head. He puts them right back down on top of the magazines. “I forget, sometimes, how long it took to get you to date me. Hard to get isn’t a game with you; it’s a sport season complete with playoffs and the championship game. That’s okay. I know how to bide my time.”

“Bide it somewhere else,” Jensen bites out.

Ty nods and leaves. Jensen considers talking to his father or Katie about the guy. Sure they helped kidnap him, but they’re not going to be happy with Ty pushing his own agenda, right? If Jim really is his father and Katie used to be his best friend, they’re predisposed to take his side in a fight.

Jensen just won’t mention the whole disembodied eye thing when he talks to them. He might sound more credible if he doesn’t sound like a man that is having a massive, hallucinating guilt complex.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, Jensen still hasn’t come to any conclusions about his life. Worse, he hasn’t quite figured out how to bring up the subject of Ty’s unwanted advances. As macho as it sounds, Jensen doesn’t want to come off like some desperate, in need of protection maiden. He isn’t. But he knows that he can’t deal with everything going on.

His whole world has been turned upside down. It’s unfair to expect him to have to deal with an unwanted admirer in addition to the whole former identity thing. If they’re going to pretend to have these big emotional connections to him, the least they can do is tell Ty to buzz the hell off.

Unfortunately, Jensen doesn’t exactly get to enact his plan. The klaxons for the compound blare to life shortly after he climbs out of the shower for the day. He manages to scramble into his underwear and get his tee over his head before Ty comes barreling into his room, dressed in what Jensen would call his ‘super villain suit.’

“We’ve got to go,” he says, grabbing Jensen’s hand. “The Enforcers have found us.”

Jensen pulls his hand free and turns to grab his jeans.

“Jensen, we have to go,” Ty warns.

“Yeah, because running barefoot is going to help so much,” Jensen observes. “Seriously, you can let me put my damn pants on.”

“They’re already in the compound. I don’t know how they got in, but we have to leave. Now,” Ty says, taking a firmer grasp on Jensen’s arm and tugging him towards the door.

“Let go of me,” Jensen orders, yanking his arm away with enough force that it makes his skin ache. He is going to have a bruise for his efforts. “I’m not going with you,” he declares.

“What? Jenny, that’s insane.”

“Well, I don’t care,” Jensen informs him. His words are a lie, but he doesn’t have time to get into the details of his decision. He knows full well that it is an illogical one. Jared is going to dump his ass, and Jensen is going to get incarcerated for things he doesn’t remember doing.

But he can’t see himself running around with the Liberation League either. They might ‘love’ him in some way, but it isn’t the sort of love Jensen needs. They’ll never rest until he is Danser again because that is who they want back. Maybe if he hadn’t had time by himself to grow, hadn’t met Jared, he’d be happy enough to go away with them. But he can’t do that now.

Even if he didn’t have Jared to try to go back to, Jensen isn’t sure he could go with them. He doesn’t want to be a part of their games. He isn’t well informed, and maybe his dad got screwed over by the Enforcers, but public opinion says they’re pretty good guys.

Jensen’s opinion says they’re stuck up pricks, but he is out of time to be arguing with himself. He has to make a decision, and it has already been made.

“I’m not going with you,” he repeats, taking a step backwards.

“You have no idea what they’ll to do you,” Ty tries reasoning.

“I’m not going with you,” Jensen says a third time.

“God you are too stubborn,” Ty says as he grabs Jensen and throws him over his shoulder. Jensen tries to writhe out of the grip, but finds himself held tight. It doesn’t make sense. Ty is a big guy, but Jensen isn’t small. He isn’t as well muscled as the other man, but he does work out.

The disparity between their strengths shouldn’t be so large, but it is. The only reason that Jensen can think of for that is that it is a power of some sort. He knows that he should be able to use his own powers to overcome Ty’s, but Jensen doesn’t have the foggiest idea of how to trigger them, how to control them or what they even are. He isn’t going to learn in the amount of time that it will take Ty to abduct him again.

Screaming for help is a fifty-fifty proposition. It could just bring more Liberation League members to them, but it is the only option Jensen has aside from just hanging out on Ty’s shoulder.

“HELP!” he screams.

“Jenny, be quiet,” Ty shushes him with a swat to his behind.

“Touch his ass again, and I’ll take your balls off,” a mechanical sounding voice threatens.

“Well, now, that isn’t part of the normal script,” Ty drawls.

“Release your hostage,” the voice orders, synthesizers warping it into something unrecognizable as the enforcer speaks. Jensen doesn’t need to hear the actual voice to know who it is though. He doubts that Crush or Shade or any of the others care about who touches Jensen’s ass.

Jensen is thrilled to know that his boyfriend, his real boyfriend is there. He wants to cry and run into his arms and do all manner of undignified things, but he isn’t a complete space case. He knows better than to blow Jared’s cover so he settles for a, “You heard it, put me down!”

“It?” both Ty and Jared ask.

“I don’t have eyes in my ass,” Jensen reminds them both.

“Fair enough,” Ty grunts as he drops Jensen unceremoniously to the floor, steeping quickly between him and Jared. “Better if I have both hands free for this fight.”

Jensen does not want to see the smack down that is about to happen. He doesn’t know what Jared’s powers are, but he has never seen anything that indicates they involve super strength. Ty’s powers do. Strength being combined with punches sounds painful.

But Jensen has learned that he doesn’t get to make that many choices in his life. Before he can come up with a way to convince them not to fight, they’re already going at it. He is relieved to see that Jared is a bit more nimble on his feet than he is at home.

That is a small favor that Jensen is determined to be grateful for because Ty’s fists have already put dents into the walls.

“Come on, Bear, can’t hit me?” Jared taunts.

Jensen blinks and blinks again. Dear God. His boyfriend is actually on a codename basis with his ex-boyfriend.

“Shut it, Blinkie,” Ty growls.

Jensen crawls to his bare feet instead of pointing out that Ty, or ‘Bear’ he guesses, might need to go to a therapist for his nickname addiction. He figures that quip wouldn’t add much to the one-sided fist fight going on.

“Come on,” Ty taunts as Jared dodges another blow, “I thought you were going to take my balls off for ‘assaulting’ my very willing partner.”

“I was not willing!” Jensen states. He can’t help the note of panic in his voice. He can’t have Jared thinking that. He just can’t. Things are going to be bad enough when the shit hits the fan later.

Unfortunately, protesting how much he did not want his ass touched just sends Jared into some sort of red zone. He goes from dodging Ty’s swipes to barreling into the shorter man. It isn’t a clean fight, not hardly. Jared might get in close, but Ty is getting some good blows in on Jared’s sides and back. There are going to be bruises and contusions and possibly broken bones.

Jensen watches them, trying to figure out how to get between them and help his boyfriend, but he doesn’t have any inspiration. Oh, his muscles twitch, and his body keeps switching his footing without consulting him on it. His sense memory is trying to come forward to inform him exactly how to go about mixing it up, but Jensen doesn’t trust any of his memories at the moment.

For all he knows, he could give into his instinct and start beating on Jared instead of Ty. Jensen is not down with partner abuse. He wants to call out encouragement to Jared, but he keeps his mouth shut. He doesn’t know Jared’s codename. He knows it isn’t ‘Blinkie,’ and calling out ‘Jared’ is a horrendously bad idea.

“We need to get moving,” he mutters aloud instead. Sure, Jared’s backup might be coming, but there is every chance that Jim or Katie will make it there sooner. Jensen might be able to take one of them, but he doubts it. Even if he is physically stronger than either of them, they both have powers, and they both remember more fights than Jensen does.

Jared sends a glance in his direction at the words, and gets clocked in the jaw for his lapse in judgment. Jensen flinches and doesn’t manage to stop his hand from reaching out to help even though it is useless.

“Be done in a minute, Baby,” Ty assures him like Jensen would even dream about trying to encourage him.

“Don’t call him ‘Baby,’” Jared’s mechanical growl is terrifying.

“What’s it to you? Developed a white knight complex while I wasn’t looking, Blinkie?” Ty taunts.

Jared launches himself at Ty again, but Ty moves, clearly anticipating the attack. Jensen rolls onto the balls of his feet, ready to jump into the fray – consequences be damned. But he doesn’t need to interfere. Jared knees Ty between the legs – viciously, mercilessly and violently. Jensen is pretty sure that isn’t in the superhero’s playbook, but he doesn’t so much care.

Ty screams and clutches at his groin, but Jared doesn’t spare him a second glance once he is down on the ground. “It’s Crosshair, you asshole,” he says, kicking Ty one more time before turning around to face Jensen. “I’ve got you,” he pants, wheezing breaths coming out digitized along with his voice. It doesn’t sound good. Jensen isn’t a doctor, but he knows that it is only adrenalin keeping Jared upright at the moment.

“Let’s get going,” Jensen suggests with more confidence than he feels. Ty is going to be up on his feet soon. He passed out after the fourth time Jared kneed him, but he isn’t going to be out long.

Jared nods and starts walking back the way he came. Jensen follows after, picking his way over the debris in the hallway as best he can. His feet don’t make it through completely unscathed, and he leaves bloody footprints as he trails after Jared. Thankfully most of the hallways are clear, though he can hear the sounds of fighting nearby.

“They’re trying to evacuate,” Jared tells him. “The whole crew isn’t here.”

“Your whole crew or theirs?” Jensen asks.

“Theirs,” Jared says, “we know how to protect our own. Don’t worry; we’ll get you back home in no time.”

Jensen is about to reply to that when the wall to his left explodes. His arms are far, far too slow as they come up to shield his head. Part of him hysterically wonders if there is going to be anything left of his brain after this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jensen wakes up in a hospital room. The lights are bright. Everything is white and stainless steel.

“Jared?” he calls out.

“You’re awake,” a woman says off to his right.

Jensen sits up, instantly regretting the action as a wave of vertigo hits him. He flops back down on the bed, breath rushing out of his lungs in a rush.

The woman laughs and comes closer, swimming into view above him. “Let me introduce myself, I’m Dr. Kim Ulrich, or as Jared would call me, Dr. Zero.” She tilts her head to the side and an almost fond smile twitches at her lips. “You look so much like your father,” she observes.

“Do I now?” Jensen asks.

The woman smiles at him and disappears from view. Jensen turns his head to the side and watches as she drags a chair closer and sits down on it. “The spitting image,” she informs him. “Or are you going to try to lie to me and tell me that you aren’t Jim Beaver’s son? That Danser’s fall from the sky caused a power discharge that only made you look like him? Maybe because Jimmy was a shape shifter, his son was too? And his mutli-generational abilities forced your face to look like that?”

Jensen gapes at her. “Lady, that is some messed up thinking you’ve got going on there.”

She smiles at him. The look is a bit sad. “I am prone to flights of fancy on occasion. Don’t tell the kids.”

“The kids?” Jensen repeats. He isn’t sure if the woman is crazy or if he just isn’t tracking well. Maybe it is all some sort of weird dream thanks to his yet again injured head.

“The team, of course,” she tells him. “They respect me and my authority. Practically think that I’m God’s gift to the Enforcers, but I’ll bet you don’t.”

“Kind of think trying to break into your facility in a past life might indicate that, yeah,” Jensen agrees.

Surprise flashes across her features. “You’re not denying it?”

“Seems kind of pointless, and I’m not in the mood,” Jensen admits.

“Jared loves you,” she says, randomly switching the topic.

The words bring a smile to Jensen’s face. Even though he just knows their conversation cannot be heading anywhere good, the knowledge that somebody else knows Jared loves him makes his heart beat a little faster.

“This is going to break his heart,” she says.

“No,” Jensen denies, “Jared…”

“Jared is all things good and light and wonderful,” she finishes for him. “And you are very much not.”

“I can’t be held responsible for things I don’t remember doing,” Jensen argues. It is a weak, pathetic argument. It wouldn’t even get him out of a traffic ticket.

“That isn’t what I am speaking about,” she tells him, “although that does bring up an interesting point.”

“Does it now?” Jensen acts as if he is shocked by her words. He might be brain damaged and an ex-gas station employee, that doesn’t make him an idiot.

“I don’t know how Jared has managed to miss that every other word out of your mouth is laden with sarcasm. I swear that boy thinks that roses and puppy dogs trail after you wherever you go. Not even your face is that pretty,” Dr. Zero tells him.

“Your powers at complimenting me are outstanding, but maybe we should just cut to the chase, huh?”

“Ah yes, the chase. Crush and Shade both know who you are. Jim is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them. He greatly objected to us taking you. I had hoped, when Jared first informed me that you had been taken, that we would be able to retrieve you without any massive revelations happening.”

“Wait, you knew? Before I was taken?”

Dr. Zero smiles at him. “Of course I knew. Jared carries a picture of you in his wallet. That and you’re on the security footage for the facility. Like I said, you look a lot like your father. At least… the way he used to look.”

“Great,” Jensen mutters, “I’m so glad so many people know me when I don’t even know me.”

“My husband, of course, thinks that we should interrogate you and lock you away,” she informs him.

“Can we just skip to the locking away part? I doubt he is going to be interested into my personal insights about food and beverage preferences and weird ass shadows of memories,” Jensen says. He had known that incarceration was going to be coming. He hadn’t held out much hope otherwise. He just wishes that he had gotten a chance to talk to Jared about it first.

“I’d prefer if we skip that step altogether,” she tells him.

“Excuse me?”

Dr. Zero looks away and then back. “I truly did love your father, Jensen. He and Mitch and I… we were best friends. I should never have started sleeping with Mitch, but… I did. Hormones, bad judgment, poor morals: call it what you will.”

“So what, I’m your guilt case?” Jensen scoffs, then hastily adds on, “Not that I mind being your guilt case. I’ll take it.”

Dr. Zero laughs. “No, not my guilt case. Things with Mitch and Jim got complicated. When Jim started showing signs of sympathy towards some of our enemies, Mitch took it upon himself to fight with him over it one on one. Things got out of hand during the confrontation… When Mitch told me, we both agreed to remember Jim for the man he used to be.”

“So you faked his death?”

“I didn’t think he wasn’t dead,” she clarifies. “Mitch didn’t tell me about him until the Liberation League started making some waves, years after we were married. Furious would’ve been a good word to describe me at that point. But… we already had two children by then. I don’t agree with every choice that Mitch has made. That is why I need you.”

Jensen furrows his brow. “Care to run that past me again?”

“I don’t trust everybody in the Enforcers, Jensen. I disagree with your father. I don’t like what he and his people have done, but a broken clock is right twice a day. The Enforcers are large now. We are policed by public opinion, as we should be. But the public doesn’t know everything. Even I don’t know everything that goes on.”

“That’s great for you. What do you want me to do about it? Make them coffee and hope that they tell me all their deep, dark secrets in a haze caffeine induced insanity?” Jensen scoffs.

Dr. Zero smiles again. “No, I want you to play the traitor.”

“I can’t do that. I don’t have a cause to defect from,” Jensen reminds her.

“Of course you do,” she says, handing over a data stick.

“What is this?” Jensen asks.

“Information that you stole for us while you were held against your will,” she tells him. “See, you had this existential crisis when your memories started to come back. You realized that all your life had been built on lies, and you didn’t know how to deal with it. I made a bargain with you that if you let me trigger your locator beacon and went back ‘home’ to gather information, I’d get you a pardon.”

“But that didn’t happen, and I don’t have any memories to pass off as remembrances,” Jensen reminds her.

“Fake them,” she more orders than says. “We aren’t talking about full on memory recall here. We’re talking about shadows and thoughts.”

“You already had this information,” Jensen says. “You…”

“I need a mole, Jensen. You have no loyalties that I need to worry about.”

“I have Jared,” Jensen says unsteadily. He isn’t sure he still has Jared. He wouldn’t stand beside a man like him, how can he expect Jared to?

“Wrapped around your little finger,” she says. “I’m not worried about Jared. I’m concerned about other people.”

“Uh-huh. And what if you find out that it is your son? Your husband?” he asks.

“I’m not so sure it isn’t,” she replies evenly. “That’s why I need you.”

“How are you going to make that work long term though? My brain is mush,” Jensen reminds her. “I’m not going to have recollections, and sooner or later somebody is going to start questioning why I’m here.”

“First of all, you have no concept on how government works, do you? There is always, always dead weight to be carried. Second of all, you don’t have much of a choice in the matter. If you don’t take my offer, you’re going to end up incarcerated either by your father or my husband. They’re not going to let you lead a life on the outside, Jensen.”

Jensen covered his face with his hands. “This is like a bad Hollywood drama,” he muttered.

“Hollywood is based off real life,” Dr. Zero points out. “I’m just giving you the opportunity to do something about it.”

“Great, fine,” Jensen says. “What happens when I inevitably find nothing? You toss me out on the streets?”

“My dear boy, you’ve been getting yourself in trouble since the day your powers manifested and caused an electrical outage for an entire county. I don’t think it is possible for you to find ‘nothing.’”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You know, the last time that you visited me in a hospital, I had just tried breaking up with you,” Jared croaks from his bed.

Jensen sighs and shuffles his way into the room instead of hanging outside the door indecisively. “How’d you know I was there?”

Jared plays with a thread on the cotton blanket covering him. “I was looking for you.”

“Through the wall?” Jensen asks.

“Kind of,” Jared tells him. “I was trying to see if my whole ‘finding Jensen’ trick would work when I wasn’t powered by desperation and anxiety.”

Jensen tilts his head to the side, puzzlement showing.

“The whole teleporting eyeball thing?” Jared reminds him. “I know you saw me.”

“That was real?” Jensen croaks out.

Jared’s lips purse tight, and he nods. “Wish I’d had the time to rip Bear’s balls off.”

Jensen laughs. “Possessive much?”

Jared looks a little sheepish. “I guess I don’t have to be, huh? You,” he swallows a few times and continues in a whisper, “you’ve got that pretty well covered on your own.”

“You know,” Jensen states, lead weight settling into his stomach.

“Yeah,” Jared admits, “Crush just couldn’t wait to share the good news about how you’ve been using me to get inside the Enforcers.”

“That’s not true,” Jensen hastens to assure him. “Jared, please. It isn’t true. You have to believe me. I love you, and I…”

“I know it isn’t,” Jared tells him. “I know that people think I’m this ball of optimism. That I’m this giant, fucking failure that can’t grasp his powers right and is a disappointment to the family name, but I’m not naïve.”

“You’re not a failure,” Jensen reassures him. This isn’t one of the scenarios that he had run through in his mind when he was trying to picture how his reunion would go, but he doesn’t have any question that Jared is anything but the best.

“I kind of am,” Jared says, “but thanks for believing otherwise.”

“You’re not,” Jensen tells him again like his conviction will rub off on Jared. “You’re brilliant. Did you say you found me?”

“Twice,” Jared says. “You should probably know that I’ve had my eyeballs on the inside of your stomach. It’s how Crush located you and broke your head.”

“Oh,” Jensen says.

“Just ‘oh’?”

“Yeah, I mean. I don’t actually remember being Danser, you know? And if you hadn’t done that, then we wouldn’t be together now. I… That is, if we’re still together?” Jensen hates the uncertainty that creeps into his voice at the question, but it can’t be helped.

“Do you want to still be together?” Jared asks.

“Yes,” Jensen says without hesitation.

Jared looks relieved. “Good.”

“Really?” Jensen asks. It doesn’t seem like that should be so easy. There is a lot of crap influencing their relationship that they hadn’t known about before.

“Yeah, really,” Jared tells him. “I was never with you because it was easy.”

“I know. You told me it was because you were shallow,” Jensen teases.

“Still am,” Jared says with a leer. The effect is ruined by the prominent bruising on his face and the way his left eye is mostly swollen shut.

“You’re not shallow,” Jensen says. “You’re wonderful.”

“Who are you, and what have you done with my boyfriend?”

“I mean it,” Jensen insists. “When I was away from you, all I could think about was how this giant secret was going to drive you away or keep me from you or whatever. I kept thinking that I should’ve told you how much I adored you and how great you were instead of bitching about your horrible taste in color schemes.”

“I give you five days before that wears off,” Jared says. “You’re too much of a sarcastic bastard to keep that up.”

“I’m trying to be profound here,” Jensen protests, half insulted.

“No, you’re trying to wriggle your way out of the dog house,” Jared corrects him. “Save your energy for my teammates.”

“Yeah, about them,” Jensen says slowly.

“I know,” Jared says, “Dr. Zero already came in and told me about her plan.”

 

“She did?”

“She’s a doctor for a reason, you know? I think she knew that you were going to come tell me about the whole plan no matter what sort of secrecy she swore you to. And for the record, I think it sucks. You shouldn’t be blackmailed into doing this.”

“No, I should be going to trial and prison instead,” Jensen reminds him.

“You might still wind up there,” Jared says.

“Might,” Jensen concedes. Getting his name pardoned doesn’t guarantee that he won’t get put away for something else. If there is something rotten in the Enforcers, it is going to have political ties to it.

“I told her I want to be there to protect you. She laughed at me,” Jared pouts.

“She shouldn’t have,” Jensen tells him.

“No?”

“Nope,” Jensen says as he boosts himself up to sit on the edge of Jared’s bed, “I didn’t do so great on my own.”

“Seemed okay to me,” Jared says. “You did put Bear in his place.”

“Ty,” Jensen corrects, “and I was starting to lose it in there. I’m glad you came along when you did.”

“Ty,” Jared mocks. “Stupid name.”

“Are you jealous?” Jensen asks incredulously.

“He stole your kisses,” Jared pouts. “Stealing is wrong.”

“Well,” Jensen suggests as he slides into the bed next to Jared, “maybe you should help me replace some of those kisses he stole.”

“Seriously? I’m injured,” Jared reminds him. “You’re injured.”

“Not that badly,” Jensen dismisses. It’s a lie. His head had started to swim before he was halfway to the room that Jared was being kept in. He wasn’t supposed to be on his feet for anything other than bathroom breaks, and he had spent a good deal of time leaning against walls for support on the way there.

“Uh-huh,” Jared says even as he shifts to put an arm around Jensen and tug him close.

“Practice for when we’re old, grey and decrepit?” Jensen suggests.

Jared presses a kiss on his temple. “I like the sound of that.”

Epilogue:

“This is ridiculous,” Jensen fumes, face creased into a scowl. “I’m never going out into the field. ‘Friendly fire’ would find my ass so fast your butt would be burning.”

Jared rolls his eyes. “It’s part of the team protocol. All members must have official active duty uniforms.”

“Yeah, well, they look stupid,” Jensen pouts as he runs his hands over the skin tight material clinging to his torso. “My legs look ridiculous.”

“Like you’re straddling an imaginary horse,” Jared agrees.

Jensen spins around to glare at his boyfriend, knee high black boots barely making a sound even though he purposely stomps to show his irritation. But the look on Jared’s face is decidedly glazed over.

“You’re turned on!” Jensen blurts out stupidly.

“Your ass looks fantastic in that,” Jared defends himself. “I’d like to friendly fire on it myself,” he says with a lascivious wink.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Jensen huffs, spinning around to stare at his reflection in the mirror again.

“God, your ass looks so perky in battle armor,” Jared observes.

“You mean glorified leggings?” Jensen scoffs.

“They’re like perfect globes of perfectness,” Jared continues as if Jensen hadn’t spoken. A quick glance in the mirror shows that Jared’s gaze is firmly set on Jensen’s buttocks.

“I am not getting it on with you in a fitting room,” Jensen warns. “Whatever would Captain Cohen say?”

Jared shoots him a dirty grin. “Crush would most definitely disapprove. Then again, he disapproves of your continuing existence on the planet.”

“He’s a douche,” Jensen states. “What guy uses a different last name from his parents?”

“Ones that were raised by super heroes? Sometimes it is easier in case a real identity gets publicly compromised,” Jared says.

“As opposed to just compromised to your greatest enemies?” Jensen asks.

“Well, your… father only really knows the team members he worked with,” Jared points out.

“Yeah. My dad used to bone Crush’s mom,” Jensen says. “And she still thinks that I’m not going to have a mysterious accident.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Jared swears. “I have eyes everywhere, remember?”

“I do, and it is still creepy. No more eyeball penetration,” Jensen orders sternly.

“How about other types of penetration? With bigger things that are feeling neglected and unloved?”

“You aren’t going to let me try on ‘body armor’ in peace, are you? You seriously want to have sex in the fitting room.”

“Come on,” Jared whines, “it isn’t like we’re in public. You’re just assembling your field uniform colors. Which, by the way, are really drab.”

“Drab is good. Flashy is not. Flashy shouts, ‘Hey, look here! Look at the awesome target I make!” Jensen reminds him.

“Says Mr. Invisible with the whole no touching, levitating, motion propulsion-y… What the hell is your power anyway?”

“No clue,” Jensen admits. “They didn’t exactly explain it in detail, though I got the impression that my powers really like electricity.”

“I kind of figured that out when the entire box of surge protectors arrived for the new place,” Jared says.

Jensen frowns. “I’m sorry about that. I know you loved that house.”

“I loved that house because you were moving in with me,” Jared reminds him. “The new place is just as good even if it has more privacy invading cameras and microphones than I’m comfortable with.”

“You mean running around flashing your spandex covered assets to the world hasn’t inured you to exhibitionism?”

“Saving the world isn’t the same as getting recorded while fucking your boyfriend over the kitchen island. Which, by the way, we are totally doing because that sucker is just the right height for your ass and my dick to make friends,” Jared says with a wink.

“You’re oddly horny today,” Jensen observes.

“I just got my boyfriend back, and we’ve both finally gotten clean bills of health. I think that it is time that I get properly rewarded for being the rescuing hero.”

“My hero!” Jensen swoons, fluttering his eyelashes and clasping his gloved hands up by his face.

“That still is not killing my boner,” Jared informs him. “Come on, Jensen, you know that you wanna mess up this room. You’re a bad boy. You’re supposed to have sex with your awesomely hot boyfriend in inappropriate places.”

“I’m an ex-barista and gas station attendant,” Jensen grumps. “I’m supposed to spit in people’s drinks and overcharge them for slurpees.”

“I know something you could slurpee,” Jared suggests, palming at his crotch.

“You ought to be glad I love you because that come on is just plain… JARED! Put that away!” Jensen orders as Jared pulls his half hard dick out of his pants.

“Nuh-uh,” Jared grunts, tugging at his dick.

“Jared!” Jensen hisses, flushing but unable to look away.

“I know you,” Jared says, somehow serious despite the situation, “so come over here and piss off Crush and your other coworkers by jizzing on your prototype uniform. We are supposed to test out the fibers for a ‘myriad’ of substance resistances.”

“I can’t believe you’ve gotten me horny,” Jensen mumbles, adjusting his cod piece as he walks over to where Jared is sprawled out on a leather love seat. Who picked that sort of furniture for a basic dressing room, Jensen doesn’t know, but he feels some righteous fury over his tax dollars going to pay for it.

“Come to think of it, I might have a small issue with the couch,” Jensen admits as he starts peeling out of his suit. For as form fitting as it is, the fabric peels away easily enough. Jared had mentioned something about the importance of quickly disrobing when dipped in poisons, caustic substances or needing to quickly become inconspicuous.

Jensen still doesn’t know how running around naked would be less attention grabbing, but he doesn’t think that he’ll ever have to test Jared’s theory.

“We don’t have lube,” Jensen reminds Jared as he pulls his boots off.

Jared laughs and grabs at the utility belt hanging loose around Jensen’s hips. “All purpose ointment works great for in a pinch lube,” he says as he fishes a small tube out.

“Really want it, huh Big Boy?” Jensen purrs.

“Oh, are we doing nicknames now?” Jared asks.

“No, you’re doing me,” Jensen retorts. “We can discuss affectionate monikers later.”

“Much,” Jared agrees, standing up to kick off his own shoes and shuck off his pants.

Before he can strip out of his shirt, Jensen shoves him back down on the loveseat and straddles his lap.

“Hey!” Jared protests.

“You’re the big, brave superhero,” Jensen reminds him, “You can handle it.”

“I’m reconnaissance!” Jared pouts.

“You did okay beating Ty’s ass to save me,” Jensen points out.

“Yeah, look how well that almost didn’t turn out for us,” Jared says.

“Hey,” Jensen protests, “I was promised sexy times, not maudlin worries about your macho fight over me with my ex.”

Jared scowls at Jensen’s words and his fingers curl onto Jensen’s naked hips.

“Why Mr. Padalecki,” Jensen teases, “are you jealous?”

“A little,” Jared admits. “Bear is kind of a headliner in the Liberation League, you know?”

“Well, he doesn’t have the kind of head I’m interested in,” Jensen says as he wiggles in Jared’s lap. “Unless that is off the table now?”

Jared’s lubed up finger pokes between Jensen’s ass cheeks at his hole in response.

“Reconnaissance is underrated,” Jensen breathes out as he pushes back. “I’m definitely all for covert finger lubing.”

Jared grins at him and threads his free hand into Jensen’s hair to pull him in for a kiss. It is wet and dirty; their mouths make a popping sound as they pull apart. The sound is jarring, but a second finger working its way inside of Jensen distracts him from the noise.

“Fuck,” he comments as he slides his own hand over his stomach before grabbing his mostly hard dick, jerking it up to full hardness as Jared finger fucks a third digit in.

“Yeah, lets,” Jared whimpers as he pulls his fingers free. This time, Jensen hears the soft noise of their makeshift lubricant being squeezed out of the bottle. Jared doesn’t take long slicking up his cock, but he does give it a few tugs before his wet fingers are curling back around Jensen’s hip to guide him into the right spot.

It isn’t the best position for penetration. Jared is gifted in the endowment department, but he isn’t freakishly long. It would be better if Jensen spun around and put his back to Jared’s chest and rode him that way. But Jensen isn’t in the mood to be practical.

The fat tip of Jared’s cock stings a little as he guides it inside Jensen. It always does at first, but the bite of pain is worth the feeling of fullness and intimacy that having Jared inside of him brings. That and Jensen loves getting his prostate pounded. That won’t be happening with their current position, but Jensen still has his dick to play with.

He jerks it as he bounces in Jared’s lap, both of them struggling to find the right rhythm. It’s awkward and sexy at the same time. It doesn’t surprise Jensen when his orgasm strikes him out of nowhere. The thought should be ironic, but part of him had honestly been expecting it. Even though he has been sleeping in the same room with Jared, they haven’t had a chance to do more than kiss and cuddle.

There has been too much turmoil in their lives, and Jensen has been lacking quality ‘me time’ let alone ‘Jared time.’ Lack of sexy times is practically a required ingredient for sudden orgasms.

“Thought you were going to dirty your hated uniform, not my shirt,” Jared grunts, still jerking his hips upwards to chase friction.

“I am,” Jensen assures him, climbing off Jared’s lap.

“Where are you going?” Jared whines.

Jensen snatches his uniform off the floor before dropping to his knees before Jared. His boyfriend’s dick is large and the head of it is almost purple. The heat of it is still familiar in Jensen’s hand as he tugs on it despite their forced time apart. It doesn’t take long for Jared to have his own orgasm, spurting out white gobs of spunk right onto the matte black material of the suit Jensen had just been wearing.

“We should do this in a bed sometime,” Jensen comments as he flops his naked ass down on the loveseat. He can feel their makeshift lube trickling out of his ass a bit, and he rather likes the idea that he is messing up the expensive leather of the couch.

“Yeah, tonight,” Jared says as he slumps over to rest his head on Jensen’s shoulder.

“You aren’t trying to take a post coital nap, are you?” Jensen asks around his own yawn.

“Not trying. Succeeding,” Jared mumbles. “Nap with me, Jense. We can have matching neck and back aches.”

Jensen laughs and shifts a little so that both of them are a bit more reclined. He doesn’t correct Jared’s nickname usage. He can to that later. Right now he has a boyfriend to snuggle.


End file.
